“New Castle County, 2020 to 2026. A councilwoman asked the Council President to carry a rezoning of her own house, sent her an ethics opinion in excerpts, sold the house fifteen months later for a million dollars more than she paid, rewrote a historic village by resolution, planned the disruption of public meetings she was invited to attend, and sat in a coffee shop with a first-time candidate and talked about a job that did not exist.”
- Karen Hartley-Nagle, The Truthline Network
“The headlines wrote themselves.”
THE PART SHE LEFT OUT
A Truthline Investigative Report on
New Castle County Councilwoman Dee Durham
By Karen Hartley-Nagle
Former President of New Castle County Council (2016 to 2024)
Published: November 4, 2026 | A Truthline Investigative Report
Munus publicum, lucrum privatum.
Public office, private gain.
*If you are reading this on your phone, skip past the Table of Contents and scroll straight to the Introduction. The report loads best on a laptop or desktop, but every word is here. Start scrolling. The story is waiting.
The Case in One Paragraph
In January 2021, New Castle County Councilwoman Dee Durham, District 2, asked Council President Karen Hartley-Nagle to sponsor Ordinance 20-089, placing a Historic overlay on Durham’s home at 901 Mount Lebanon Road. Hartley-Nagle required an Ethics Commission opinion first. Advisory Opinion 21-01, issued January 13, 2021, records that Durham told the Commission she intended to sell the property that year and that her appraiser said the overlay would lower its value; it ordered her to recuse from all discussion with Council members. The excerpts Durham emailed on January 23, 2021, contained none of that. Council adopted the ordinance 12 to 0 on February 23, 2021. On May 25, 2022, Durham and her husband deeded the house for “ten dollars and other consideration”; the county transfer tax stamp of $22,566.00 and the public sale record show $1,500,000. She had bought it from her father’s trust in 2000 for $500,000. Six weeks before applying for the overlay, she had introduced Ordinance 20-071, rewriting the County’s historic code, and voted for it while her application was pending. The report also documents her 2024 Centreville cottage resolution, introduced and adopted the same night and repealed 7 to 5 four months later; her instruction to residents to send committee résumés to her rather than the County portal; her refusal to produce personal emails and texts about disrupted 2023 public meetings; and her February 26, 2026 meeting with candidate Kyle Grantham about a Council job that exists in no ordinance, budget, or pay plan.
Key Facts, From the County’s Own Records
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May 8, 2000: Davis G. Durham, Trustee, conveys 901 Mount Lebanon Road, Parcels A and B, 6.84 acres, to Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans for $500,000.00, reserving a lifetime right of occupancy to himself (Deed Book 2825, Page 151).
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December 30, 2004: a Confirmatory and Corrective Deed conditions the father’s reserved occupancy on a $1,000 monthly maintenance fee paid to Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans and $1,000 a year toward pool repairs (Instrument 20041230-0140031).
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March 28, 2017: the house is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, reference number 100000656.
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June 9, 2020: Councilwoman Dee Durham introduces Ordinance 20-071, rewriting Chapter 6 and Chapter 40 of the County Code on historic resources.
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July 31, 2020: The rezoning exhibits for Application 2020-0438 R/Z, applicant Dee Durham, to place a Historic overlay on 901 Mount Lebanon Road, are dated.
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August 25, 2020: Ordinance 20-089, the rezoning of 901 Mount Lebanon Road, is introduced by Karen Hartley-Nagle as sponsor.
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October 27, 2020: Ordinance 20-071 is adopted 11 to 2 with Councilwoman Durham sponsoring and voting.
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January 13, 2021: The New Castle County Ethics Commission issues Advisory Opinion 21-01, 6 to 0, recording that the requester intends to sell the property “sometime this calendar year” and that her appraiser “opined that the historic overlay would decrease the property’s value.”
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January 23, 2021: Councilwoman Durham emails the Council President and Councilman John Cartier “the pertinent excerpts.” Neither sentence appears in them.
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February 23, 2021: Ordinance 20-089 is adopted 12 to 0, Durham recused.
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February 9, 2022: Dee Durham files for re-election listing 404 Snuff Mill Road, Wilmington 19807. Public records show that property sold in May 2022 for $610,000.
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February 25, 2022: A Correctional Deed merging Parcel B into Parcel A, signed by Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans, is notarized by Michael P. Migliore, Counsel to County Council (Instrument 20220225-0023474).
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May 25, 2022: Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans deed 901 Mount Lebanon Road to Thomas J. and Teresa B. Sheehan for “$10.00 (Ten Dollars) plus other value and consideration.” County realty transfer tax stamped on the deed: $22,566.00. Public sale record: $1,500,000, recorded June 8, 2022.
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Fiscal years 2022 through 2025: Internal Revenue Service filings list Dee Durham as President of Preservation Delaware, Inc., address of record 404 Snuff Mill Road.
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2023, 2024, 2025: Plastic Free Delaware’s filings list Dee Durham as Chair, compensated $14,000, $18,000, and $22,000.
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January 29, 2024: Wendie C. Stabler of Saul Ewing LLP writes County Council for Spanos LLC that the cottage proposal was worked “through the local civic associations, the resident Council Person, Dee Durham, and the Land Use Department” for “over a year.”
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February 27, 2024: Resolution 24-072, prime sponsor Durham, introduced and adopted the same night, 10 to 2, allowing ten cottage units per acre throughout the Village of Centreville by Department approval.
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April 19 to April 30, 2024: the County Executive’s office tells Centreville residents that résumés emailed to Councilwoman Durham “will not be reviewed” and that only one had reached the County Executive. Durham replies: “Applications can ALSO be sent directly to me. They do NOT need to go through the portal.”
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February 26, 2024: Councilwoman Durham writes residents that the Centreville proposal “was not ‘my’ proposal.” Her name is the only sponsor on it.
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May 1, 2024: Michael P. Migliore, Counsel to Council, sends the Council President the working draft of her resolution rescinding 24-072, eighteen days before the Kennett Pike Association’s retraction.
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May 19, 2024: the Kennett Pike Association retracts its support, writing that it “misinterpreted or misunderstood critical information.”
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June 11, 2024: Resolution 24-142, Durham’s repeal of her own resolution, passes 7 to 5 with one not voting. Karen Hartley-Nagle’s Resolution 24-141 is withdrawn.
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February 26, 2026: Durham meets candidate Kyle Grantham for two hours at Brew HaHa, Greenville, and raises a Council communications position that exists in no ordinance, budget, or pay plan.
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9 Del. C. § 1143: “no elected official of the County Council shall hold any other county office or employment with the County Council during the term.”
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New Castle County Ethics Commission reliance rule: an advisory opinion is a defense only “as long as the request truthfully disclosed all known material facts.”
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Questions Residents Are Asking
Did Dee Durham break the Ethics Code when she sought the overlay on her own house?
The Ethics Commission told her she had a conflict and could proceed only by recusing completely, including from “any discussion, public or otherwise, with Council members” about the ordinance. Ten days after the opinion, she wrote two Council members about the ordinance and its co-sponsorship. The Commission’s protection for a person who relies on an opinion applies only “as long as the request truthfully disclosed all known material facts.” The Commission does not revisit opinions on its own.
Why does it matter that she left out the sale?
Because the sponsor she asked to carry the ordinance, and the twelve members who voted for it, were told the overlay was a preservation sacrifice with no personal gain. The Commission had been told she was selling that year and that her appraiser thought the overlay would lower the price. The house sold fifteen months after the vote for three times what she paid her father.
Did the overlay raise the sale price?
Her appraiser told her it would lower it, according to what she told the Commission. The house sold for $1,500,000. What the record shows is the sequence: she rewrote the historic code, put her house under it, told the Commission she was selling, told her sponsor she was not, and sold.
Was Ordinance 20-071 about her house?
It was a countywide rewrite of the historic preservation code. She introduced it on June 9, 2020. Her application to place her own house in the Historic overlay is dated July 31, 2020. She voted for the rewrite on October 27, 2020, while her application was pending. The rewrite expanded the uses, bonuses, and incentives available to properties in the overlay. The Commission noted the sponsorship in its opinion.
Is a ten-dollar deed allowed?
Delaware allows a deed to recite nominal consideration if the true value is stated in an affidavit filed with it. The county transfer tax stamped on the deed, $22,566.00 at one and one-half percent, corresponds to about $1,504,000. The public sale record is $1,500,000.
Why does the notary matter?
Michael P. Migliore is Counsel to County Council. He advises the body she sits on. He notarized her private deed merging two parcels into one, three months before she sold the merged parcel.
What did the Centreville resolution do?
It allowed the Department of Land Use to approve “cottage communities” of up to ten units per acre on any lot in the Village of Centreville, by right, without a Design Review Advisory Committee review, because the committee had been allowed to go inactive. It was introduced and adopted the same night, February 27, 2024, 10 to 2. Both civic associations that supported it retracted their support within three months. Council repealed it 7 to 5 on June 11, 2024.
Did Karen Hartley-Nagle vote for the Centreville resolution?
Yes. I asked for a two-week tabling so residents could read it. It was refused. The two civic associations had endorsed it in writing, the Department had recommended it, and the district’s member said the community supported it. When the associations retracted, I drafted the repeal, offered her the chance to carry her own first, and withdrew mine when hers passed.
What happened with the résumés?
She told residents to send résumés to her. The County Executive’s office said in writing that only portal applications would be reviewed and that only one résumé had reached the County Executive. She wrote back that applications did not need to go through the portal. The Code says the district member recommends and the County Executive appoints, with Council consent.
What is the job she discussed with Kyle Grantham?
A communications specialist for County Council. No ordinance, pay plan or budget creates it. She said it would need seven votes and that nothing was imminent. State law bars a Council member from holding employment with County Council. The only way he could take it was by not being on Council.
Is there a law against that?
Delaware’s bribery statute, 11 Del. C. § 1201(2), reaches a person who “offers, confers or agrees to confer a personal benefit upon a public servant,” which the Code defines to include a candidate, “upon an agreement or understanding that some person will or may be designated or nominated as a candidate for public office.” Section 1208 says it is no defense that the person could not deliver. The statute is quoted in full in Section XVI. Whether it was violated is for the Department of Justice.
Why are her boards a problem?
She is President of Preservation Delaware, which uses her home as its address, and the paid Chair of Plastic Free Delaware, which paid her $22,000 in 2025, while she sponsors the County’s historic code, confirms the Historic Review Board, and votes the budget of the department that runs the park her organization composts in. The Ethics Commission has said since 1997 that Council members “should refrain from leadership positions” in organizations whose activities center on influencing County government.
What happened at the community meetings?
Constituents asked for them. Residents told me afterward that Councilwoman Durham and Councilman Carter had planned the attacks. I ended the series after one of hers. The County emails I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act confirmed the planning and showed her directing others. She refused to produce her personal emails and texts, which the Attorney General has held are public records when they concern public business.
Can a resident file an ethics complaint?
Yes, within five years of the conduct, signed under penalty of perjury, at nccethics.org. The sale of May 25, 2022, is within the window until May 2027.
What is the author’s stake in this?
I served as President of County Council from November 2016 to November 2024. I sponsored Ordinance 20-089 at her request. I voted for Resolution 24-072 and drafted its repeal. I hosted the meetings. I filed the request for her emails. I ran for County Executive in 2024 against Marcus Henry and did not win. I am not a candidate for anything. I have no financial interest in any property, organization, or election described here.
Author’s Disclosure
The author of this report, Karen Hartley-Nagle, served as President of New Castle County Council from November 2016 to November 2024, and as an appointee to the New Castle County Board of Adjustment from 2012 to 2016. She filed a Statement of Financial Interests with the New Castle County Ethics Commission every year from 2012 through 2024.
She is a first-person witness to the following, and the report says so where it relies on them: Councilwoman Dee Durham’s January 2021 request that she sponsor Ordinance 20-089 and her condition that an Ethics Commission opinion be obtained first; the telephone call from Richard Hall, General Manager of the Department of Land Use, about the posted notice sign at 901 Mount Lebanon Road; her conversation with Julie Sebring, attorney for the Ethics Commission, after the vote; her request on February 27, 2024, that Resolution 24-072 be tabled; her offer to Councilwoman Durham on the Centreville repeal; the 2023 community meetings and what residents told her; her Freedom of Information Act request and what the County emails showed. Every other fact in this report is drawn from the public documents listed in the Evidence File.
She sponsored Ordinance 20-089 and voted for it. She voted for Resolution 24-072 and for Resolution 24-142. She sponsored and withdrew Resolution 24-141. She is not a candidate for any office and has no financial interest in any property, organization, or election described in this report.
A package of documents was delivered to every member of County Council in 2026. The author received a copy from a source. Every document in the package is a public record, and every fact drawn from it was confirmed against the original public source. An unsigned letter in the package is described in this report only for what it is; no fact in this report rests on it.
The author attends public meetings remotely and reviews the County’s recorded minutes, agendas, packets, and video.
If You Only Read One-Page
In January 2021, Councilwoman Dee Durham, New Castle County Council District 2, asked me, as President of County Council, to sponsor an ordinance placing a Historic overlay zoning district on her own home at 901 Mount Lebanon Road in Brandywine Hundred. I told her I would not touch it without a written opinion from the New Castle County Ethics Commission. She got one. She sent me what she called the pertinent excerpts.
The pertinent excerpts did not include the two sentences that mattered most. The opinion she obtained records that she told the Commission she intended to sell the property that same calendar year, and that her own appraiser had told her the overlay would lower the price. The opinion ordered her to recuse from everything, in those words, even if the rezoning diminished the value. The ordinance passed 12 to 0 on February 23, 2021, with her recused. On May 25, 2022, she and her husband signed a deed to the house for ten dollars and other consideration.
The county transfer tax stamped on that deed, $22,566.00 at the County’s rate of one and one-half percent, works out to a price of about $1,504,000. The public sale record says $1,500,000. Her father’s trust had sold her the house in May 2000 for $500,000.
Six weeks before she applied for the overlay on her own house, she introduced Ordinance 20-071, a top-to-bottom rewrite of the County’s historic preservation code, which expanded the uses available to properties inside a Historic overlay and created new bonuses, transfer rights, impact-fee reductions and affordable-housing credits for them. She sponsored it, she spoke for it, and she voted for it on October 27, 2020, while her own application for the same overlay was pending at the Historic Review Board. The Ethics Commission noted the sponsorship in its opinion. She did not recuse from that one.
During the rezoning, the General Manager of the Department of Land Use, Richard Hall, called me because parts of the posted public notice sign the County Code requires on a property under rezoning kept being taped over at 901 Mount Lebanon Road. He said his staff had told her it was a violation, that she did it again, that it had happened three times, that his staff had photographed it each time, and that he felt put in a bad position because the applicant was a member of County Council.
The Unified Development Code requires the application number, the applicant’s name, the parcel number, and the hearing date, time, and place to be “prominently displayed” and “clearly visible” on that sign, and makes the applicant responsible for any sign “defaced to the extent that the information to be conveyed is no longer legible.”
Three months before the sale, a correctional deed merging the two parcels of the property back into one was notarized by Michael P. Migliore, Counsel to County Council. The Counsel to Council works for the body she sits on.
In February 2024, she introduced and passed, on the same night, a resolution that rewrote the design rules for the historic Village of Centreville to allow ten cottage units per acre as a matter of right, after what the developer’s lawyer described in writing as more than a year of collaboration with her. The civic associations that supported it withdrew their support when they learned what it did.
I voted for it that night after asking that it be tabled for two weeks so residents could read it. When the village organized to undo it, I drafted the repeal and offered her the chance to carry her own version first. Hers passed 7 to 5 on June 11, 2024. I withdrew mine.
In the middle of that fight, she told Centreville residents to send their résumés to her for the reinstated Design Review Advisory Committee. The County Executive’s office told the same residents in writing that applications go through the County portal, that résumés sent to her would not be reviewed, and that only one had ever reached the County Executive. She wrote back, in capital letters, that applications did not need to go through the portal.
In 2023, I hosted a series of countywide community meetings that constituents had asked for. Councilwoman Durham and Councilman David Carter, District 6, with a few allies, planned the attacks that were made at those meetings. I ended the series after one of hers. I requested her County emails, her personal emails, and her text messages under the Freedom of Information Act. The County emails confirmed the plan and showed her telling the others what to do and what to say. She refused to produce the personal emails and the texts. In 2021, she had petitioned the Attorney General herself over the County’s slowness in producing emails and texts she wanted for a bill of hers.
On February 26, 2026, at the Brew HaHa in Greenville, she met for two hours with Kyle Grantham, a first-time Democratic candidate for the open District 3 Council seat, on the day he announced. He says she raised, more than once, a Council communications job that does not exist in any budget, pay plan or ordinance, and asked whether it was something he should consider. She says the conversation was theoretical. She endorsed his opponent. Delaware law bars a Council member from holding any other employment with County Council during the term. The job she described was one he could only take if he were not on Council.
She is President of Preservation Delaware, Inc., whose address of record with the Internal Revenue Service is her home. She is the paid Chair of Plastic Free Delaware, which paid her $14,000 in 2023, $18,000 in 2024, and $22,000 in 2025, and which she founded.
She is a director of the Greater Wilmington Convention and Visitors Bureau. She is a sitting member of the body that writes the historic preservation code, confirms the Historic Review Board, and funds the park her organization composts in. The Ethics Commission’s own published opinions, since 1997, say Council members should refrain from leadership positions in organizations whose business comes before the County.
None of this is one incident. It is a method.
The Part She Left Out
Introduction: A Sponsor Is Asked
Every rezoning in New Castle County needs a sponsor. A member of County Council puts his or her name on the ordinance, introduces it, carries it through the Land Use Committee, and stands up for it on the night of the vote. When the property belongs to a member of Council, that member cannot be the sponsor. Someone else has to carry it. In January 2021, that someone was me.
I had been President of County Council for four years by then. I knew the sponsor’s name is the first thing a resident sees on a rezoning and the last thing they remember. I also knew the Ethics Code the way you know a thing you have been bound by every year since 2012, when I began filing my own Statement of Financial Interests as an appointee to the Board of Adjustment. So when Councilwoman Dee Durham, District 2, asked me to sponsor an ordinance placing a Historic overlay zoning district on her own home, I gave her one condition. Get a written opinion from the New Castle County Ethics Commission first.
She did not want to. She was angry with me for insisting. She got the opinion anyway, and then she sent me and Councilman John Cartier, District 8, what she called the pertinent excerpts. I read the excerpts. I sponsored the ordinance. Council adopted it 12 to 0 with her recused. The next day a colleague sent me a link to the Commission’s website, and I read the whole opinion for the first time.
“She sent me the pertinent excerpts. The pertinent excerpts were the ones that were pertinent to her.”
That is where this report begins, because it is where I learned how she works. Everything after it, the sale of the house, the code she rewrote, the village she rezoned by resolution, the meetings she planned to break, the job she floated to a man she wanted out of a race, follows the same shape. A piece of the truth is offered. The rest is left out. The office does the work.
A few months ago, a package of documents was delivered to every member of County Council. I was given a copy. It held an unsigned letter from a resident, the deeds to 901 Mount Lebanon Road going back to 1950, the full text of Ordinance 20-071, six Ethics Commission opinions on when a County official may sit on a board that does business with the County, and a 2018 Court of Chancery filing. I did not take the letter’s word for anything. I pulled every record it pointed to and every record it did not. What follows is what the records say.
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I. The Request
The first email in the chain is Councilwoman Dee Durham’s, sent Saturday, January 23, 2021, at 4:32 in the afternoon, to me and to Councilman John Cartier, District 8. The subject line was “Placing Historic Overlay on our property.” It opened this way: “Since I have spoken with both of you on this issue (and because of the potential perception of conflict of interest, Karen is the sponsor on the ordinance), I wanted to share with you the gist of what the Ethics Commission advised me. There is NO reason that my husband and I cannot pursue the H overlay as we have the same rights as any citizen as the law allows. I do need to recuse myself when the ordinance comes before Council.”
Then came what she labeled “The pertinent excerpts.” Four paragraphs followed. They said the opinion “basically says that if you pursue the H zoning, you will not violate the Ethics Code if the steps outlined in the opinion are followed (recusal).” They said the Code “provides rules about the conduct of that County official while pursuing any such personal land use matter.” They said a County official “does not leave those property rights ‘at the door’ when they enter into public office.” They closed: “I hope this lays to rest any concern there might be about this issue (or non-issue!).”
Councilman Cartier answered on Monday, January 25, 2021, at 12:50 in the afternoon. “I admire your determination to seek historic overlay zoning for your personal residence and pursuing an Ethics Commission opinion to guide you through the process,” he wrote. “To my knowledge, you would be the first NCC government official ever to seek HZ for their personal residence!” He wrote that “Historical zoning hardly confers personal gain to you but, in effect, reduces your property rights at your residence by preserving it.” He wrote: “In the end, no one will be able accuse you of hypocrisy for historical preservation. You walk the walk as well as talk the talk for that issue!” He agreed to co-sponsor “since you will be recusing when it is introduced and comes to a vote and I will speak strongly for its passage by county council.”
“Councilman Cartier believed she had gone to the Commission on her own. She had not. I sent her.”
Councilman Cartier’s email tells you what Councilwoman Durham told him. He understood the ethics opinion to be her idea, her diligence, her walking the walk. It was my condition. He understood the overlay as a sacrifice of her property rights with no personal gain. The appraiser she had already hired had told her the same thing, and she had told the Ethics Commission so, in the course of telling the Commission she was about to sell. None of that was in the pertinent excerpts.
On Tuesday, January 26, 2021, at 6:45 in the evening, she forwarded Councilman Cartier’s reply to me with one line: “Do you want to add John Cartier as a co-sponsor?” I forwarded the chain to my own email that night to keep it. I have it still.
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II. What the Opinion Actually Said
Advisory Opinion 21-01 of the New Castle County Ethics Commission is dated January 13, 2021. It was decided by Commissioners Johanna Bishop, Robert Hicks, Sally Jensen, Robert Ralston, Kellie Tetrick and Charles Toliver, 6 to 0, with Chairperson Paula Jenkins-Massie not voting and signing. It is public. It sits on the Commission’s website under the heading “council-member,” which is how I eventually read it. The requester is not named. The property is not named. Everything else is.
The Facts section states that “a member of County Council, the requester, owns real estate which includes a mid-century home.” It states that “out of a desire to protect the historic nature of that property, and with the intention of selling the property sometime this calendar year, the requester decided to undergo the process of having an historic overlay added to the residential zoning classification of the property.”
It states: “The requester has already renovated the subject property and intends to place it on the market for sale this year but did not request tax credits or other government incentives. When the requester had an appraisal of the property performed in anticipation of placing the property on the market, the appraiser opined that the historic overlay would decrease the property’s value.”
It states: “The requester served as the executive director of a nonprofit entity dedicated to preserving properties in this state.” It states: “While on Council, the requester has sponsored several pieces of legislation geared toward the expansion of historic preservation.” And it states: “Additionally, the requester sponsored legislation which expands the eligible uses of historic overlay district properties.”
It names the ordinance: “The next step in the process is for County Council to review and vote on the proposed ordinance, Ordinance 20-089, sponsored by the President of County Council.”
“Four facts the Commission wrote down. The sale. The appraiser. The nonprofit. The legislation that expanded the uses. Not one made it into the excerpts.”
The Analysis says what the excerpts did not. “There is a direct relationship between the issue at stake between the requester/County official and the subject matter of proposed Ordinance 20-089,” the Commission wrote. “A reasonable member of the public with knowledge of the facts would view this situation as one which presents a clear conflict of interest to the requester regardless of whether the overlay increases or decreases the market price of the subject property.”
The Conclusion: “The Commission concludes that the requester will not violate the Ethics Code in this rezoning process if the requester continues to recuse from all involvement in the steps in the rezoning process, including its consideration by County Council.” And then this sentence, which she did not send me: “It is important to note that the recusal requirements are necessary even if the rezoning of the property may diminish the current market value of the subject property.”
The Finding set the conditions. “A conflict of interest exists for the requester.” She “must recuse from any discussion and vote on the proposed ordinance.” She “must state on the public record at any Council meeting or hearing during which proposed Ordinance 20-089 is noticed and/or discussed that the subject property is owned by the requester and that the requester is recusing from all Council consideration of the matter.” She “will not take part in any discussion, public or otherwise, with Council members, Council staff, or any New Castle County official or employee, about any aspect of proposed Ordinance 20-089, except for the very limited purpose on the public record of providing factual information, as the applicant.” The Commission also asked the Clerk of Council to keep the ordinance off every committee agenda but Land Use.
Read that condition against the January 23 email. The opinion barred her from taking part in “any discussion, public or otherwise, with Council members” about “any aspect” of the ordinance. Ten days after the opinion was issued, she wrote to two Council members about the ordinance, characterized the opinion, asked one of them to co-sponsor, and asked the other whether to add him. That is a discussion with Council members about an aspect of Ordinance 20-089.
“The opinion said: no discussion with Council members about any aspect of the ordinance. Ten days later she wrote two of us to line up a co-sponsor.”
III. The Part She Left Out
Put the two documents side by side.
The day after the vote, February 24, 2021, Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick, District 3, sent me an email with the subject line “Fw: advisory opinion” and a link to the Commission’s Browse Documents page. That was the first time I saw the whole opinion. I called Julie Sebring, the attorney for the Ethics Commission, and asked whether the Commission revisits an opinion when the person who requested it did not give the Commission all of the truthful information, or when a Council member relied on a partial version of it. I was told no. The Commission relies on the requesting party to tell the truth and to provide all of the information. It would not be following up.
That answer is the system working exactly as designed. The Ethics Commission’s regulations require that a request for an advisory opinion “include the issue presented and relevant facts and documents” and be signed by the requesting party, and that the requesting party “include with his or her request all documentary evidence which may be relevant.” The Commission’s own request form requires the requester to swear that “the information I have provided is complete and correct.” The Commission’s published rule on reliance reads: “If your request discloses truthfully all material facts and you act in reliance upon the Commission’s advice, as stated in its opinion, that opinion shall constitute a complete defense in any enforcement proceeding before the Commission, and evidence of good faith conduct in any related civil or criminal proceeding.”
The County’s Government Ethics Brochure puts the same rule in plainer words: “A person who relies on an Opinion issued in response to his or her request shall not be subject to penalties for violating the Ethics Code as long as the request truthfully disclosed all known material facts.” The Commission does not audit. It does not investigate its own advisory opinions. It is a shield that works only for the person who told it everything, and the only person who knows whether she told it everything is her.
“The Commission’s protection runs to the person who told it everything. The Commission never checks. The requester is the only one who knows.”
What the Commission did know, because she told it, was that she was selling. What I did not know, because she did not tell me, was the same thing. A sponsor who knew that the owner intended to put the house on the market within the year would have asked a different set of questions. Whether the overlay was being placed to preserve a house or to position a listing. Whether a rezoning the County would carry at public expense, through the Department of Land Use, the Historic Review Board, the Planning Board and County Council, was being timed to a sale. Whether a member who had just rewritten the historic code should be the next property through the door. I did not get to ask those questions. The excerpts made sure of it.
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IV. The House on Mount Lebanon Road
901 Mount Lebanon Road is a stone and frame house on 6.84 acres above the Brandywine, in the Rockland section of Brandywine Hundred, built in 1950 for Dr. Davis Godfrey Durham, an ophthalmological surgeon, and his wife Harriet Frorer Durham, an author and penal-reform advocate who chaired the State’s Advisory Council on Adult Corrections. The architect was Jesse Luke Stetler.
Better Homes and Gardens photographed it in 1955. Additions came in 1973. The Delaware State Review Board for Historic Preservation considered its nomination on April 13, 2016, and the National Park Service listed it in the National Register of Historic Places on March 28, 2017, reference number 100000656, as “901 Mount Lebanon Road,” a Modern Movement house with a period of significance from 1950 to 1973. The State presented the certificate to the owner, Dee Durham, at the Review Board’s meeting on October 18, 2017.
The deeds tell the rest. In 1950, the land came to Davis G. Durham and Harriet F. Durham from Mary T. Thompson for the recited ten dollars. In 1993, Davis G. Durham conveyed it to himself as Trustee under a Declaration of Trust dated December 29, 1992. In 1999, a minor subdivision plan by VanDemark and Lynch divided the land into Parcel A, 4.216 acres with the house and stable on Mount Lebanon Road, and Parcel B, 2.628 acres on Creek Road, and a Parcel C.
On May 8, 2000, Davis G. Durham, Trustee, deeded Parcels A and B to his daughter Dee Durham and her husband Barry R. Evans “for and in consideration of the sum of FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND AND 00/100 DOLLARS ($500,000.00),” as tenants by the entireties, recorded May 11, 2000, in Deed Book 2825 at Page 151. The father reserved to himself “during the term expiring upon the death of the party of the first part” the right “to occupy and use the residence and other amenities currently situated on Parcel A.”
Two agreements were recorded with the deed. In one, the father reserved the right to convey the development rights to Parcel B by a perpetual preservation easement to an open space organization, with his daughter and son-in-law holding a right of first refusal, and if no such easement was ever granted in his lifetime, the right to buy the development rights after his death for one dollar. In the other, the father took a right of first refusal to buy the whole property back during his lifetime at a specimen price of $500,000 plus up to $200,000 of documented improvements.
“The father sold the house to his daughter for half a million dollars and kept the right to live in it until he died. Four years later, the deed was rewritten to make him pay rent.”
On December 30, 2004, a Confirmatory and Corrective Deed prepared by Christos T. Adamopoulos of Connolly Bove Lodge and Hutz, effective back to May 8, 2000, restated the conveyance. The father’s reserved right of occupancy was now “conditioned upon the following: (i) regular payment of a one thousand dollar ($1,000) monthly maintenance fee to the parties of the second part; (ii) performance of all operating and maintenance costs related to the swimming pool existing upon the premises, and payment of $1,000 per year towards repairs such as plumbing, tilework, and repainting.” The deed added that “the monthly maintenance fee shall be due and owing to the parties of the second part on a monthly basis for the duration of this life tenancy, regardless of the party of the first part’s residence at or maintenance of personal property upon the premises.” The same deed conveyed “the development rights to both of the tracts.” Dr. Davis G. Durham died in December 2010 at 96.
Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans granted two conservation easements on the land to the State of Delaware, through the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, dated December 30, 2004, and December 29, 2010. Her campaign biography describes it this way: “Dee and her husband permanently protected the open space of their property through conservation easements now held by the state and placed their historic home under New Castle County historic zoning.”
The County parcel record for 901 Mount Lebanon Road lists the land use applications in order. Application 19970811, Durham, Davis, minor land development. Application 20040953, Durham, Davis G., resubdivision. Application 20190362, 901 Mt Lebanon Rd, administrative subdivision request, complete. Application 20200438, 901 Mount Lebanon Road, H, active. Application 20200571, 901 Mt Lebanon Road historic overlay rezoning, Historic Review Board, planning complete. Application 20220840, 901 exterior modifications, Historic Review Board permits, active. Permits for residential additions were closed in 2002 and 2023, and heating, cooling, and plumbing permits in 2022, 2023, and 2024. The record also shows the current assessment after the County’s 2024 general reassessment: land $305,700, structure $854,800, total $1,160,500.
A January 2019 profile of the new Council recorded that Councilwoman Durham “lives in the home her parents built on Mount Lebanon Road.” She had won District 2 in November 2018 with 54.5 percent of the vote, defeating a 22-year Republican incumbent, Robert Weiner, in a seat that had been Republican since County Council was created. That is the house, and that is the member, that came to me in January 2021.
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V. Six Weeks
Ordinance 20-071 was introduced on June 9, 2020, by Councilwoman Dee Durham, District 2, and Councilman John Cartier, District 8. Councilman David Carter, District 6, joined as a sponsor on the substitute. Its title ran eight lines: to amend New Castle County Code Chapter 6, the Building Code, and Chapter 40, the Unified Development Code, “regarding Article 7 (‘Transferable Development Rights and Bonuses’), Article 15 (‘Historic Resources’), and Article 33 (‘Definitions’) regarding Code provisions relating to historic resources.” Its synopsis called it “a comprehensive update of historic preservation provisions in the New Castle County Code.” It was the product of a Historic Preservation Working Group that Councilwoman Durham convened. It was her bill.
The rezoning exhibits for her own house are dated July 31, 2020. Application 2020-0438 R/Z, applicant Dee Durham, asked the County to revise the zoning map for 901 Mount Lebanon Road, Tax Parcels 06-075.00-006 and 06-075.00-026, 6.85 acres, “from NC40 (Single-Family) to NC40 and H (Historic) Overlay Zone.” The State’s Preliminary Land Use Service reviewed it on August 26, 2020. Ordinance 20-089 carrying the rezoning was introduced on August 25, 2020, under my name.
The Historic Review Board took it up on September 15, 2020, continued it, and found the property eligible at its November 4, 2020, business meeting under criteria A, D, E, G, and L, classifying it as an “Enclosed Context Site.” The Planning Board held its public hearing the same day, with no public comment, and recommended approval 8 to 0 with one abstention on December 15, 2020.
Six weeks separate the introduction of her rewrite of the historic code from the dating of her application to put her own house under that code. Her application was pending at the Historic Review Board on October 27, 2020, the night Council adopted Ordinance 20-071, 11 to 2. She sponsored it. She spoke for it. She voted for it. Councilwoman Lisa Diller, District 5, voted no over the adaptive reuse language. Councilwoman Durham said afterward that “it’s a balancing act of how far you can go and still get seven votes.” Richard Hall, General Manager of the Department of Land Use, called it “a big win for the county and for historic preservation.”
“June 9: she introduces the rewrite of the historic code. July 31: she applies to put her own house under it. October 27: she votes for the rewrite while her application is pending. She recused from nothing.”
What the rewrite did is in its own text. Section 40.15.140 provides that all uses permitted in the underlying district remain permitted in the Historic overlay, and “in addition, the Department may permit additional uses in any zoning district in accordance with the adaptive reuse provisions of Section 40.15.150.” Section 40.15.150, Adaptive reuse, provides that “within an Historic overlay zoning district, any significant historic resource may be converted or adapted into one of the following uses”: office uses; commercial retail and service uses not exceeding 10,000 square feet of gross floor area, including retail bakeries, furniture and home furnishing stores, hardware stores, food and beverage stores, health and personal care stores, clothing and accessory stores, sporting goods, hobby, book and music stores, local postal offices and couriers; and restaurant uses not exceeding 5,000 square feet.
The structure must have at least 1,500 square feet of gross floor area. The lot must meet the minimum lot size for “other permitted use” in the underlying district. Access must come from an arterial or collector street, except that “at its discretion and with DelDOT concurrence, the Department may permit such uses to locate, expand or rebuild taking access from other streets.” Parking may be cut by twenty percent. Signs may be half the size otherwise allowed. “Further subdivision of the parcel is permitted in accordance with this Chapter provided that the site’s contextual classification is retained.”
The house at 901 Mount Lebanon Road has 6,200 square feet. The parcel has 6.84 acres. The underlying zoning is NC40, single-family on 40,000-square-foot lots.
Section 40.07.440 lists the bonuses available to a land development plan containing an eligible historic resource: “Bonus of dwelling units in a major residential land development plan. Additional floor area for nonresidential properties. Transferable development rights. Impact fee reduction. Utilization of an historic Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit(s).” Section 40.07.430 provides that a historic residence preserved for single-family use “shall not be counted as one of the permitted residential lots” but “shall be a bonus unit,”
and that a historic structure larger than 2,000 square feet “may be converted to a duplex and shall not be counted” against permitted units.
Section 40.15.320 allows a Preservation Plan to propose that “some or all of the impact fees relating to libraries, parks and special facilities, and county facilities be waived by the County.” Section 40.01.130 provides that even when a recorded plan sunsets and its zoning reverts, “Historic overlay rezoning shall not revert to the previous zoning designation and shall remain in place.” The fiscal note estimated “a reduction to impact fees of approximately $28,000 would be recognized per occurrence.”
The Ethics Code’s conflict rule, Section 2.03.103.A.1, bars a County official from using the authority of office “for the personal or private benefit of himself or herself” or “a member of his or her immediate family,” and carves out only “an action having a de minimis economic impact or which affects to the same degree a class consisting of the general public or a subclass” that includes the official. It adds: “There will be a rebuttable presumption of a knowing or willful violation of this section if the action benefits the County official or employee, his or her spouse, or his or her dependent children.” The class of owners of Historic overlay properties in New Castle County is small. The class of Council members who were applicants for that overlay while voting to expand what the overlay allows had one member.
The Ethics Commission knew about the legislation. It wrote it into the Facts of Advisory Opinion 21-01: “the requester sponsored legislation which expands the eligible uses of historic overlay district properties.” The Commission was asked only about Ordinance 20-089, her rezoning. It was not asked about Ordinance 20-071, her rewrite, because the rewrite was already law by the time she asked, adopted eleven weeks before the opinion. The Commission’s rule is that it “will not issue an Advisory Opinion regarding past conduct.” She asked the Commission about the vote she would not cast. She did not ask about the vote she had already cast.
“She asked the Commission about the vote she would not cast. She never asked about the one she had.”
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VI. The Sign
Section 40.31.340.B.4 of the Unified Development Code requires an applicant for a rezoning to “erect a public hearing posted notice sign on all subject properties at least ten (10) days in advance of a public hearing.” The sign is “double-faced,” “four (4) foot by four (4) foot,” “a yellow background with two (2) inch black lettering,” placed “in a conspicuous location,” “perpendicular to the street so as to be clearly visible to the public.” The Code says what must be on it: “The application number, the applicant’s name and phone number, the name of the plan, and the tax parcel number(s) shall be prominently displayed on the sign.
In addition, the date, time, location, and hearing board shall be clearly visible.” The applicant must give the Department “photographic proof of posting and a signed affidavit prior to the public hearing.” And the Code puts the sign’s condition on the applicant: “The applicant shall be responsible for cleaning and replacing any posted sign (no more than once) which has been defaced to the extent that the information to be conveyed is no longer legible.”
The sign exists for one reason. A neighbor driving past learns from the road that the property is before the County, what is being asked, who is asking, and when and where they can be heard. The Code does not care whether the applicant is an elected official. It cares that the words on it can be read.
While Ordinance 20-089 was moving through the Department of Land Use, the Historic Review Board and the Planning Board, Richard Hall, General Manager of the Department of Land Use, telephoned me. The Department’s posted notice sign at 901 Mount Lebanon Road, the yellow sign advertising the rezoning, was being found with tape over parts of it. Not the whole sign. Parts of it.
The parts, he said, that she apparently did not want people reading. His staff had told her she could not do that and that it was a violation of the law. She did it again. He told me it had happened three times. He told me the Department had addressed it each time, had taken photographs, and that I could see the photographs if I wanted to. He told me he felt put in a bad position, because the applicant was a sitting member of County Council, and he was concerned about the repercussions for his department and for himself. He asked me, as President of Council, what could be done.
“A rezoning sign is four feet by four feet, yellow, with two-inch black letters. It is built to be read from the road. Three times, the General Manager said, parts of it were taped over so they could not be read.”
The Code names the applicant as the one responsible for a sign “defaced to the extent that the information to be conveyed is no longer legible.” It assumes the applicant is the one who wants the sign read, because the applicant is the one who needs the hearing to count. Here the applicant was the one with the tape. Division 40.31.900 provides that “any person who violates any provision(s) of this Chapter shall be subject to any of the enforcement mechanisms and penalties outlined in this Division,” that a violation “shall be subject to a criminal proceeding,” that “it is unnecessary to prove the defendant’s state of mind,” that where no other penalty is provided “violators will be subject to a five hundred dollar ($500.00) fine,” and that “each day that a continuing violation of any ordinance is maintained or permitted shall constitute a separate offense.” The Department told her it was a violation. She did it again.
I am a first-person witness to that call and to what Richard Hall said in it. The applicant on Application 2020-0438 R/Z was Dee Durham. The ordinance was mine. I carried it to a 12 to 0 vote without being told that the person I was carrying it for had, by the General Manager’s account, taped over the public notice three times after being told it was a violation.
VII. The Vote She Did Not Cast
On February 16, 2021, at the Land Use Committee, the minutes record: “Ms. Durham announced that she will be recusing herself from discussion and vote on this ordinance as the subject property belongs to her and her husband.” On February 23, 2021, at County Council, the minutes record: “Councilwoman Durham announced that she is recusing herself as she is the owner of the property.” One member of the public spoke, R.J. Miles. Councilman David Carter, District 6, voted yes and cited, the minutes say, “his respect for the Councilmember leading by example.”
The vote was 12 to 0. Yes: Councilman Timothy Sheldon, District 9; Councilman David Carter, District 6; Councilman John Cartier, District 8; Councilwoman Lisa Diller, District 5; Councilman Penrose Hollins, District 4; Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick, District 3; Councilman George Smiley, District 7; Councilman Jea P. Street, District 10; Councilman David Tackett, District 11; Councilman Kenneth Woods, District 12; Councilman Bill Bell, District 1; and me. Durham: recused.
Councilman Carter praised a Councilwoman for leading by example. He did not know she had told the Commission she was selling. He did not know her appraiser had said what he had said. He did not know what Richard Hall had told me. None of us on that dais knew, except the member who was recused, and she had made certain of it by choosing which paragraphs we read.
“Twelve votes for an example that none of the twelve had been allowed to see.”
The next afternoon, February 24, 2021, Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick, District 3, forwarded me the link to the Commission’s Browse Documents page under the subject “Fw: advisory opinion.” That is when I read the Facts. That is when I called Julie Sebring.
VIII. The Notary
The County parcel record for 901 Mount Lebanon Road lists Application 20190362, an “administrative subdivision request,” filed in 2019 and marked complete. The 2000 and 2004 deeds describe two tax parcels, 06-075.00-006, Parcel A with the house, and 06-075.00-026, Parcel B on Creek Road.
On February 19, 2022, Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans signed a Correctional Deed conveying both parcels from themselves to themselves. It was recorded February 25, 2022, as Instrument 20220225-0023474, with the Recorder’s stamp showing $0.00 in transfer tax. Its stated purpose: “This CORRECTIONAL DEED is being recorded to convey Lot No. 06-075.00-026 (Parcel B) back into Parcel 06-075.00-006 (Parcel A) on the Record Minor Subdivision Plan prepared by VanDemark & Lynch, Inc.” It cites “the New Castle County Unified Development Code Division 40.33.300 (General Definitions subdivision) exempting subdivision review to convey one or more lots affecting the herein described properties.” It carries the line “NO TITLE SEARCH REQUESTED OR PERFORMED.”
The notary who took the acknowledgment of Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans on that deed was Michael P. Migliore, Attorney at Law, Notary Public, State of Delaware, commission with no expiration date under 29 Del. C. § 4323(a)(3), the provision for attorneys.
Michael P. Migliore is Counsel to New Castle County Council. He is the lawyer who advises the thirteen members of Council, drafts and reviews their legislation, and answers their questions from the dais. The Land Use memorandum on the Centreville cottage resolution was copied to “Michael Migliore, Counsel to Council.” He sat through every meeting described in this report.
“The lawyer for County Council notarized a Council member’s private deed, three months before she sold the property for a million and a half dollars.”
A notarial act is a public act. Counsel to Council is a public lawyer paid by the public to serve a public body. The deed was a private instrument in a private real estate transaction by one of the thirteen members he serves, merging two parcels into one in the ninety days before the merged parcel was sold.
The Ethics Code defines “private enterprise” to include “the ownership of real or personal property,” and Section 2.03.104.A bars every County employee and official from conduct that “undermines the public confidence in the impartiality of a governmental body” by “creating an appearance that the decisions or actions of the County employee, County official or governmental body are influenced by factors other than the merits.” The State of Delaware has thousands of notaries public who do not work for County Council. She used the one who does.
IX. Ten Dollars
On May 25, 2022, Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans signed a deed prepared by The Matlusky Firm, LLC, of 1423 North Harrison Street, Wilmington, conveying 901 Mount Lebanon Road, now described as “Parcel A & B-Resubdivision Plan of Davis G. Durham” and surveyed at the parties’ request by The PELSA Company as Project 22-0809, to Thomas J. Sheehan and Teresa B. Sheehan, husband and wife, “for and in consideration of the sum of $10.00 (Ten Dollars) plus other value and consideration.” David E. Matlusky took the acknowledgment. The deed was recorded with a stamp showing county realty transfer tax paid of $22,566.00.
A deed that recites ten dollars is a Delaware convention, not a price. Delaware Code Title 30, Section 5409, requires every deed presented for recording to “set forth therein and as a part of such document the true, full and complete value thereof,” or to be “accompanied by an affidavit executed by a responsible person connected with the transaction” that sets forth “the true, full and complete value.” The parties chose the affidavit. The affidavit is not on the face of the deed. The tax stamp is.
New Castle County’s realty transfer tax rate is one and one-half percent of the value of the property, under 9 Del. C. § 8102 and Chapter 14, Article 10, of the County Code. The State’s rate is two and one-half percent. Divide the county stamp by the county rate. $22,566.00 divided by 0.015 is $1,504,400. The public sale record for 901 Mount Lebanon Road, carried by Zillow from county records, shows the property sold on June 8, 2022, for $1,500,000, 6,200 square feet, 6.84 acres, built in 1950.
Five hundred thousand dollars in. One million five hundred thousand dollars out. The Historic overlay she told the Ethics Commission would lower the price went on the property on February 23, 2021. The deed out was signed fifteen months later. The ordinance that put the overlay there is the one I sponsored, after being shown excerpts that left out the sale she had already told the Commission about.
“She told the Commission she was selling. She told the Commission the overlay would cost her money. She told me neither. Then she sold for three times what she paid her father.”
The 2004 deed is worth reading once more against that figure. From May 2000 until his death in December 2010, the father who sold his daughter the house for $500,000 owed her $1,000 a month to go on living in it, “regardless of the party of the first part’s residence at or maintenance of personal property upon the premises.” Over ten years, that provision is worth $120,000 to the daughter and son-in-law before the pool. The property they received in 2000 for half a million dollars, with its development rights conveyed to them in 2004, left their hands in 2022 for a million and a half.
Where did she go? On February 9, 2022, sixteen days before the correctional deed was recorded and fifteen weeks before the sale, Dee Durham filed as a Democratic candidate for re-election to County Council District 2 and gave the State Department of Elections her address as 404 Snuff Mill Road, Wilmington, Delaware 19807. Public property records for 404 Snuff Mill Road, a 1959 Cape Cod on six-tenths of an acre in the Greenville and Centreville area of Christiana Hundred, show a sale in May 2022 for $610,000.
Her campaign committee, Friends for Dee Durham, registered with the State on February 12, 2018, still lists its treasurer, Barry R. Evans, at 901 Mount Lebanon Road. Both of the nonprofits she leads give the Internal Revenue Service 404 Snuff Mill Road as their address.
The Ethics Commission’s five-year window for a complaint runs “within 5 years of the time of the violation.” For the January 2021 request and the February 2021 vote, that window closed in early 2026. For the sale of May 25, 2022, it runs to May 2027.
X. The Boards
Councilwoman Dee Durham’s official County biography lists her career before Council: Executive Director of Preservation Delaware; Executive Director of S.A.V.E., a land-use and transportation advocacy organization in Chester County, Pennsylvania; fundraising consultant, including Interim Development Director of the French and Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust; Grants Manager of the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary; Program Director of Common Cause Delaware from 2012 to 2015.
It lists her boards: Sierra Club Delaware Chapter; New Castle Conservation District; Preservation Delaware; Junior League of Wilmington, including a term as President; Civic Council of Brandywine Hundred; Wilmington Friends School; Friends of Wilmington Parks; Friends of Brandywine Creek State Park; Friends of Auburn Heights Preserve; Old Brandywine Village; Greater Brandywine Village Restoration; Preservation Action; and, currently, the Greater Wilmington Convention and Visitors Bureau.
It says she founded Plastic Free Delaware in 2010, “which she still chairs.” Her campaign biography adds the Rethinking Delaware Coalition, Friends of Zoar Church in Odessa, the Brandywine Hundred Historical Society, which it says she founded in 2022, and the National Association of Counties Environment, Energy and Land Use Steering Committee.
The Internal Revenue Service filings of the organizations tell you what the biographies do not.
Preservation Delaware, Inc., Employer Identification Number 51-0345619, the statewide historic preservation nonprofit she once ran as its only paid employee, lists Dee Durham as Vice President for the fiscal year ending June 2018. It does not list her for fiscal 2019 or fiscal 2021. For fiscal years 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, it lists her as President. Its address of record with the Internal Revenue Service is 404 Snuff Mill Road, Wilmington, the address she gave the Department of Elections in 2022.
The fiscal 2019 filing lists Marcus Henry as a director. Marcus Henry is now the County Executive of New Castle County. He gave her campaign committee $600 on December 6, 2025.
Plastic Free Delaware, Employer Identification Number 85-2916447, exempt since February 2020, lists Dee Durham as Chair. It paid her $14,000 in 2023, $18,000 in 2024, and $22,000 in 2025. Its address of record is also 404 Snuff Mill Road. Its 2023 revenue was $125,784. Her campaign biography says that in early 2024 it “launched a community composting site at Talley Day Park.” Talley Day Park is a New Castle County park, maintained by the County Department of Community Services, whose budget she votes on.
The Greater Wilmington Convention and Visitors Bureau lists “The Hon Dee Durham” as a director in its filings for 2022 through 2025.
“President of the statewide preservation group, with its mail delivered to her house. Paid Chair of the plastics group, twenty-two thousand dollars last year. A seat on the visitors bureau. And a vote on the Council that writes the historic code, confirms the Historic Review Board, and runs the park her group composts in.”
The package left on every Council member’s desk included six Ethics Commission opinions. They were chosen with care. Each one concerns a County official or employee who wanted to lead an organization whose business touches the County.
Advisory Opinion 97-05, April 12, 1997, told a Council aide she could belong to a civic organization that lobbies the County on land use but could not hold office in it, sit on its board or chair a committee, because “when a County Official has a high profile, leadership position in an organization whose purpose and/or actual activities center upon influencing County government, an appearance exists that the County official is mingling the two positions.” It then said this, in its Finding: “The Commission further holds generally, that in regard to other County officials who are members of County Council, and the Executive office, and their aides, they, too, should refrain from leadership positions in such organizations given impartiality and prejudgment considerations and the difficulty in severing their participation in their County position from the issues intimate to the organizations.”
Advisory Opinion 05-24, December 28, 2005, let an elected official join a nonprofit board only if he recused “from all planning, advising or other action concerning the County relationship with the non-profit,” and warned that “where the employee or official’s County position figures prominently in the person’s status with the non-profit there is a potential for such an appearance to arise.”
Advisory Opinion 13-05, May 7, 2013, ordered a County employee to resign a nonprofit board seat unless relieved of an assignment in the district where the nonprofit operated, because recusal “would not remove the suspicion in the reasonable member of the public that the organization in which the requester holds a prominent position would receive special treatment.”
Advisory Opinion 13-09, 2013, told a County employee she could not accept the presidency of her civic association and had to end her active membership, because “membership in one of the groups over which she personally exercises County authority necessarily creates an improper appearance that recusal cannot cure.”
Advisory Opinion 15-09, August 12, 2015, allowed a Community Services manager onto a housing nonprofit’s board only on condition that she “recuse from any issues regarding the nonprofit organization that come before the County,” make clear “that she is not acting or speaking on behalf of New Castle County,” and never “appear before New Castle County officials or employees on behalf of the nonprofit organization.”
Advisory Opinion 15-12, November 16, 2015, let an elected official join the advisory board of a small heritage association with ten-dollar dues, on condition that he “inform County departments, boards and commissions of his involvement,” recuse “from any activities which may cause the appearance of conflict, including policy making, promotion, giving of advice,” and never appear before the County for the association or before the association for the County. The Commission “commends the fact that the requester sought this opinion before accepting.”
Set those six against the record. The President of Preservation Delaware convened the County’s Historic Preservation Working Group, wrote and carried the County’s historic code rewrite, sponsored Ordinance 20-111 to place a Historic overlay on 501 Mount Lebanon Road for an applicant called Mt Lebanon Road LLC, sponsored Ordinance 20-112 to require a Historic overlay on every eligible property the County acquires, and voted on each. Her own house’s National Register nomination was photographed by Michael J. Emmons Jr., who appears beside her as Vice President of Preservation Delaware in its fiscal 2022 filing. The paid Chair of Plastic Free Delaware votes the budget of the Department of Community Services, which runs the park where her organization operates.
The Ethics Code’s definition of “business with which he or she is associated” is “any business in which the person is a director, officer, owner or employee.” The Code defines “private enterprise” as “any activity conducted by any person, whether conducted for profit or not for profit.” Section 2.03.103.B.2 provides that “no County official may represent or otherwise assist any private enterprise with respect to any matter before the County.”
“Since 1997, the Commission has said it in writing: members of Council should refrain from leadership positions in organizations whose business comes before the County. She is President of one and the paid Chair of another.”
XI. The Garden Party
On Sunday, September 23, 2018, from 4:30 to 7:30 in the evening, Preservation Delaware held its Annual Meeting and “Mid Mod Garden Party” at “a fabulous private mid-century modern private residence overlooking the Brandywine Valley. Built in 1950, this home was recently placed on the National Register of Historic Places.” The address on the Facebook event was Mount Lebanon Road, Wilmington, Delaware 19803. The host was listed as 901 and Preservation Delaware. The schedule: “4:30 p.m. Brief Annual Meeting & Election of Board & Officers. 5:00 p.m. Cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, silent auction & live jazz.”
Sponsorship levels ran from Herman Miller at $100 for one ticket to Frank Lloyd Wright at $5,000 for ten tickets. The Joseph Eichler level was $2,500 for six tickets, with the sponsor’s name “in invitation (deadline 8/15) & program” and “on the PDI website.”
The published sponsor list under Joseph Eichler read: “The Durham Family & Grapetree LLC.”
Dee Durham was, at that moment, forty-four days from the general election in which she won her Council seat. She was a board member of Preservation Delaware, having left the staff years earlier. The event at her home elected the organization’s board and officers.
Five days before the party, on September 18, 2018, her brother Andrew C. Durham, a landscape architect in Annandale, Virginia, filed a complaint in the Delaware Court of Chancery, Civil Action No. 2018-0686-SG, captioned “Motion to Cease and Desist Using the Names ‘Grapetree LLC’ and ‘The Durham Family,’” against Preservation Delaware, Inc. and Dee Durham. The complaint stated that Grapetree LLC, a Delaware limited liability company owned twenty percent each by the five Durham siblings, held one asset, a villa in St. Lucia called Les Chaudieres, whose income was vacation rental weeks.
It asked the court to order Preservation Delaware to stop using the names “the Durham family” and “Grapetree LLC” as the donor of the $2,500 sponsorship “until such time that it has formal, express approval from all five Durham family members or a majority of the shareholders of Grapetree LLC.”
It attached Preservation Delaware’s event pages and a books-and-records demand dated August 19, 2018, served on Grapetree LLC at 901 Mount Lebanon Road, requesting “all correspondence and agreements between the LLC and/or Dee Durham personally and Preservation Delaware Inc. regarding the apparent ‘gift’ of a discounted week to an organization which Dee sits on the Board.”
“A silent auction at her house, five days after her brother asked the Court of Chancery to stop the charity from using the family’s name as the donor.”
The Grapetree litigation did not end there. On March 25, 2025, the Delaware Supreme Court decided Durham v. Grapetree, LLC, No. 280, 2024, affirming the Court of Chancery’s final order of June 21, 2024, in Civil Actions 2019-0366 and 2020-0175.
The Supreme Court’s opinion states that “Dee and Jeffrey have taken the most active role in managing the company.” It states that the liquidating trustee appointed by the Court of Chancery sold Les Chaudieres for $1.4 million in July 2023. It states that “the Trustee found that Dee and Jeffrey made or authorized expenditures for which they could not provide documentation” and “therefore recommended that Dee’s and Jeffrey’s distributions be adjusted downward accordingly,” and that the trustee “determined that Dee and Jeffrey had not misappropriated the rent that Grapetree had received.”
The Court of Chancery’s transcript, quoted by the Supreme Court, records “a deduction proposed for Dee and for Jeffrey” for “situations where they were unable to document that sums that they claim to have expended” were “expended on behalf of the LLC.”
That is a Delaware court’s record of how the Councilwoman handled money that belonged in part to other people. The County’s money belongs entirely to other people.
XII. Centreville: The Resolution
The Village of Centreville sits on Kennett Pike, Delaware Route 52, in Christiana Hundred, in Council District 2. It dates to about 1750. In 2007, County Council placed it under a Hometown Overlay zoning district by Substitute No. 1 to Ordinance 07-093 and adopted its Community Redevelopment Plan and Manual of Design Guidelines by Resolution 07-183 on October 9, 2007.
The Unified Development Code, Section 40.26.440, provides that “a Design Review Advisory Committee shall be established pursuant to Section 40.30.450 for each Hometown Zoning Overlay District created.” Section 40.26.430.C provides that amendments to a Community Redevelopment Plan “may be initiated by the community, the Design Review Advisory Committee (DRAC), the District Council Member, or by the Department.” The Centreville Design Review Advisory Committee had gone inactive. Nobody reconstituted it. That vacancy is the hinge of what followed.
On January 29, 2024, Wendie C. Stabler of Saul Ewing LLP wrote to Nellie Manlove Hill, Clerk of County Council, copying me as President, all members of Council, “The Hon. Dee Durham,” Charuni Patibanda, General Manager of the Department of Land Use, Michael Migliore, Counsel to Council, Senior Planner Janet Vine, Antoni Sekowski, and “Spanos LLC.” Her client was “Spanos LLC, a local, family-owned real estate investment company that has adaptively developed many historic properties in the Centreville Community.”
She wrote: “While there is not an active Design Review Advisory Committee in Centreville, we worked through the local civic associations, the resident Council Person, Dee Durham, and the Land Use Department, (all of which have been tremendously supportive of the project).” She wrote: “This interaction and collaboration has been ongoing for over a year.” She enclosed the resolution, the proposed amendments, “A Visual Guide to Cottage Communities,” and support letters from the Centreville Civic Association and the Kennett Pike Association.
The property was 5719 Kennett Pike, Tax Parcel 07-007.00-109, about 1.24 acres inside the Hometown Overlay with 216.9 feet of frontage on the Pike, carrying a 1,650-square-foot building put up in 1962 as offices, on a lot overgrown with bamboo. The owner was Spanos LLC, whose principals are Alan Livadas and his son Jon Livadas. Spanos LLC had held the lot since June 2021.
The concept presented to Council was ten houses of under 2,000 square feet each, three facing the Pike and two rows of seven running back from it around a shared green, a community building, two common driveways with no turnaround, and one shared septic field at the rear. Centreville has no public sewer and no public water. The lines stop at the Wilmington Country Club.
“Over a year of collaboration with the resident Councilperson, the developer’s lawyer wrote. Two years on her newsletter list, a resident wrote back, and not one mention of the plan.”
The Centreville Civic Association’s letter, dated January 22, 2024, and signed by its President, Bayard Williams, expressed “not only our support, but our enthusiasm, for the proposed residential pocket community,” and said, “Mr. Livadas has been actively working with our community for over a year.” The Kennett Pike Association’s letter, the same date, signed by its Vice President, John Danzeisen, and addressed to me and the members of Council, said the proposal “will fit nicely into the character of the village” while “providing affordable housing to residents.”
The Department of Land Use memorandum of February 16, 2024, under County Executive Matthew Meyer and General Manager Charuni Patibanda, said the quiet part in writing: “Typically, an amendment or revision to the Community Redevelopment Plan would be vetted with the appropriate Design Review Advisory Committee (DRAC). However, because the Centreville DRAC is not currently active, the Department of Land Use has worked closely with the applicant to help develop guidelines.”
The resolution’s own recitals then declared that “the Department of Land Use in its role as the Centreville Design Review Advisory Committee has recommended approval.” The Department appointed itself the village’s design committee and recommended the developer’s design to itself.
Resolution 24-072, prime sponsor Dee Durham, “To Amend the Centreville Community Redevelopment Plan and Manual of Design Guidelines to Create a Cottage Community Development Option,” carried an introduction date of February 27, 2024. It was introduced and adopted the same night. Its operative text: “The New Castle County Department of Land Use may approve a Cottage Community in all Zoning Districts within the Village of Centreville (Hometown Overlay).” “The maximum density shall be ten (10) cottage units per developable acre of land.” Units could sit “on separate lots, a single lot, or a combination thereof,” held “by lot, condominium or a combination thereof,” ten feet apart. Fiscal impact: “no discernable fiscal impact.”
It was a resolution, not an ordinance, so it never went to the Planning Board and never had a public hearing with the thirty-day open record that a rezoning carries. It changed what could be built on every lot in a historic village by a vote the same night it was introduced.
At the Land Use Committee on February 20, 2024, the minutes record: “Ms. Durham introduced Wendie Stabler from Saul Ewing LLP to speak. Wendie Stabler gave a PowerPoint presentation.” Public comment: “None.”
The village found out on the weekend before the vote. On Friday, February 23, 2024, a resident forwarded a news item about the proposal with the note, “there’s a meeting about it early next week (02/27).” On Sunday, February 25, Don McDonald Jr., a Centreville resident, wrote to his neighbors: “WOW-why are we just hearing about this now.” On Monday, February 26, at 10:17 in the morning, Councilwoman Durham answered the thread from her County account: “For all on this email thread, this proposal for a change in the Centreville Hometown Overlay was not ‘my’ proposal.
My understanding is that both the Centreville Civic Association and the KPA board were involved in discussions about this concept and supported it. I have asked for an additional public meeting to be held to seek input from all.” Her name was the only name on the resolution.
At 1:40 that afternoon, Blair McConnel, secretary of the Valley Way association, wrote her: “This is the first I am hearing of the proposed development. It feels pushed through in a hurry. Please do not vote to allow this development to proceed.”
At 4:31, Councilwoman Durham replied to all: “It is important to note that the proposal before County Council right now is NOT the concept plan for development. It is simply a change to the enabling legislation to increase the allowable density. Two-acre minimums are not a village setting.” She added: “No other former or current County Councilmember has fought as hard as I have, and secured, significant enhanced protections for historic resources, the scenic byway, and open space and parks.” And: “Regardless of tomorrow, which I will get back to you on, there will be ample opportunity for everyone in the community and beyond to comment on the actual proposed project once it is formally submitted.” Residents had asked her to table it. Tomorrow was the vote.
On February 27, 2024, I asked that the resolution be tabled for two weeks so that the people of Centreville could read what was about to be done to their village. Dan Larnick, a Centreville resident, put it this way to Councilwoman Durham in an email on April 30, 2024, copied to me: “You sure had a sense of urgency to pass this new rule when asked to table it by Karen for two weeks so all could get more information as needed.” It was not tabled.
Ten residents and advocates spoke: Alan Livadas, Jon Livadas, Bill Duncan, George Frankel, Don McDonald, Bayard Williams, Gaylin Crumley, Dan Larnick, Wendie Stabler and John Danzeisen. The resolution passed 10 to 2 with one absent. Yes: Councilman Bill Bell, District 12; Councilman John Cartier, District 8; Councilwoman Dee Durham, District 2; Councilwoman Valerie George, District 5; Councilman Penrose Hollins, District 4; Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick, District 3; Councilman Timothy Sheldon, District 9; Councilman George Smiley, District 7; Councilman Jea P. Street, District 10; and me. No: Councilman David Carter, District 6, and Councilman Brandon Toole, District 1. Absent: Councilman David Tackett, District 11.
I voted yes. I had asked for two weeks and been refused; the two civic associations had endorsed it in writing; the Department had recommended it, and the sponsor was the district’s own member, who told the committee and the Council that the community was behind it. I took the record as it was presented. The record had been assembled by the developer’s lawyer, the Department, and her. Within three months, both civic associations said they had been misled, and I drafted the repeal.
“A historic village’s design rules, rewritten by resolution, introduced and passed the same night, with the Department of Land Use serving as the village’s own review committee because the real one had been allowed to die.”
The argument did not end with the gavel. On February 29, 2024, Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick, District 3, wrote the residents from her County account: “It’s time to stop obsessing about a project. This did not approve any project. It offered another option for a type of residential development.” That afternoon she wrote again: “To berate a councilperson for bringing forth a piece of legislation, as was requested by a department, is highly questionable. This legislation received 9 votes; it seems if there was a real legal and/or ethical question, it would have been brought up by our attorney or the county attorney before the vote.” The minutes record ten. She closed: “It is your option as to whether to file an ethics complaint against any of us. We are not strangers to those types of complaints.”
On March 1, 2024, Councilwoman Durham wrote the same list: “I actually live in the Centreville civic association area and am a dues-paying member.” And: “Feel free to report me to the Ethics Commission; that is your prerogative.”
The Centreville Civic Association whose January 22 endorsement she had told Council about was an association she belonged to.
Dan Larnick, a Centreville resident, wrote the same week that seven volunteers had already agreed to serve on a reconstituted Design Review Advisory Committee and that “this is just the first of many plans in the works for this type of housing in Centreville.”
On April 11, 2024, the Centreville Civic Association held its annual meeting at Lower Brandywine Presbyterian Church. More than a hundred people came, standing room only, in a village of about 750 homes. Alan Livadas presented the ten-house concept and said, by one resident’s account, that “it might have been a mistake not to inform the public.” Thom Harvey of Harvey Hanna and Associates, a Centreville resident of 34 years, told the room the plan was not feasible on 1.25 acres. Charles Weymouth, a historic architect, said it was out of context for the village. Asked by Blair McConnel what prevented the same density from being built on the Frederick shopping center, a five-acre parcel in the overlay, Alan Livadas answered, in the transcript she circulated the next morning: “Yes, Frederick is in that district. So yes, in theory that could happen. We are not planning that right now.”
Councilwoman Durham stood at the back of the hall. She did not step forward. She left without speaking. The next day Richard L. Abbott wrote to her and to the Association’s President, Bayard Williams, asking each for “a simple Yes or No Answer” by April 19 to one question: would she “introduce a Resolution repealing Resolution No. 24-072 now that the community has spoken in vigorous opposition.”
Don McDonald Jr. had emailed her the same request two weeks earlier. Neither answer came by April 19.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
XIII. Centreville: The Résumés
The fight over the resolution turned at once to the committee that should have reviewed it. The Unified Development Code, Section 40.30.450.C, says how a Design Review Advisory Committee is filled: “The District Council person(s), in whose councilmanic district a Hometown Overlay is found, shall make recommendations to the County Executive who shall appoint members subject to County Council consent.” Members must be “residents or property owners of the area affected by the overlay district and the surrounding area identified in the Community Redevelopment Plan,” with one registered architect and one registered landscape architect allowed from outside, and the committee must be “comprised equally of business and homeowner/residential interests.”
Centreville residents began sending résumés. Councilwoman Durham told them to send the résumés to her. Don McDonald Jr., a Centreville resident, wrote on April 19, 2024, to County Executive Matthew Meyer, Councilwoman Durham, me, and a dozen neighbors: “Council Person Dee Durham said ‘Submit the resumes to me for the Reinstatement of the Centreville Drac.’ Janet Kilpatrick also stated the resumes should be submitted to Dee Durham.” He said about a dozen had done so.
Kaitlin Phillips, Executive Assistant to County Executive Matthew Meyer, answered the same day at 11:32 in the morning: “We have an application portal on our website where applicants are welcome to apply to any of our boards and commissions. Sending emails with resumes to Councilwoman Durham alone is not sufficient. The application portal is how New Castle County, including Councilwoman Durham, manages all applications for all of our boards and commissions.” And: “Following our discussion this morning, I was able to go through the County Executive’s inbox. However, of the emails you sent to CE Meyer, I was only able to find one resume for Mr. Andrew Hayes. CE Meyer has not received any resumes for any other interested applicants for this commission.”
At 12:36 that afternoon, she wrote again to the whole list: “All interested applicants must apply through New Castle County’s application portal in order to be considered. Because of the detail required, submitting resumes via email to any staff or officials will not be sufficient, and thus only the applications submitted to our portal will be considered and reviewed by New Castle County. Please do not use this time to simply forward resumes previously sent to Councilwoman Durham to the County Executive via email, as this is not the formal application process and they will not be reviewed.”
On April 23, 2024, Richard L. Abbott of Abbott Consulting Services, 5632 Kennett Pike, wrote to Kaitlin Phillips and the list: “I am completely confused. Councilwoman Durham first told us to email resumes to her and that she would in turn forward them for consideration by the County Executive. As a result, about a Baker's dozen people submitted their resumes for potential appointment to the Centreville DRAC. Now Councilwoman Durham says: 1) she never sent any resumes to the County Executive, and 2) the Portal you provided a link to IS NOT the correct way of applying for potential appointment by Executive Meyer.
Apparently, she wants to make it impossible to apply; her positions leave no method of making application, other than her statement that she will take care of things when she returns from being out of town.”
On April 30, 2024, at 7:39 in the morning, Councilwoman Durham wrote to the list from her County account: “Applications can ALSO be sent directly to me. They do NOT need to go through the portal.”
“The County Executive’s office, in writing, twice: résumés sent to the Councilwoman will not be reviewed. The Councilwoman, in capitals: they do NOT need to go through the portal.”
Dan Larnick answered her at 8:48 that morning: “I don’t understand all the misunderstandings here? The CE’s office stated to send the information to the portal. It’s been two months with a handful of resumes that you have and no follow-up on your end, no sense of urgency, etc.” He quoted the membership rule from the County’s own Design Review Advisory Committee of Centreville web page and asked: “Do you understand the rules from where Centreville DRAC members come from here?”
At 9:55 Don McDonald Jr. sent the list her District 2 newsletter of that morning, which covered the draft Sustainability Plan, impact fees, a Concord Pike rezoning, the Youth Planning Board, alarm registration, composting and her monthly constituent coffee, and wrote: “I have been on her newsletter list for over 2 years, AND NOT ONE MENTION OF HER PLAN.”
At 9:59 Richard L. Abbott replied to all: “So much for government transparency and ethics, both are sorely missing in this sordid affair.” At 4:41 that afternoon, Don McDonald Jr. sent the chain to Allison Lewis and Julie Sebring of the New Castle County Ethics Commission and to Attorney General Kathy Jennings with the subject line “INVESTIGATION REQUESTED 4/30/2024,” writing that the resolution had been passed on “fictitious information” and asking for “a thorough investigation.”
The appointments came through the consent calendar. On May 21, 2024, at the Boards and Commissions Subcommittee, Councilwoman Durham “explained how the Centreville Design Review Advisory Board is constituted.” On May 28, 2024, Council adopted 13 to 0, with Councilwoman Durham as prime sponsor, Resolutions 24-118, 24-120, 24-121 and 24-124, appointing Todd T. Breck, the outside architect; Anne P. Canby, a resident and former Secretary of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control; James Dalle Pazze as Chair, a business owner in the overlay and the committee’s former chair; and John Bilek, a resident of the overlay and a board member of the Centreville Civic Association that had signed the January 22 support letter.
On June 11, 2024, Council adopted 13 to 0 Resolutions 24-136 and 24-137 appointing Andrew C. Hayes, the one applicant whose résumé had reached the County Executive, and John R. Ormsby. On October 22, 2024, Resolution 24-182 appointed Jeff Stapen.
Richard L. Abbott, Don McDonald Jr., Dan Larnick, and George Hobbs, who had pressed the matter in writing, were not appointed.
XIV. Centreville: The Reversal
On May 1, 2024, at 9:44 in the evening, Michael P. Migliore, Counsel to County Council, sent me a working draft of the repeal I had asked him to prepare. His email read: “Attached is a working draft of the Resolution to address the concerns relating to erosion of Centreville’s community foundational character as a result of Council’s decision to allow a cottage community development option in Centreville.” He added: “If you would like to introduce say on May 14, then the legislation must be provided to the Clerk by no later than Monday, May 6, before 10 am.”
On May 24, 2024, Nellie Hill, Clerk of Council, sent me the final copy: “Per our conversation, attached is the final copy of your Centreville resolution.” The repeal of her resolution was drafted at my request, by Council’s own lawyer, eighteen days before the Kennett Pike Association put its retraction in writing.
On May 19, 2024, Deborah Diver, President of the Kennett Pike Association, wrote to me and to all twelve members of Council, copying Bayard Williams, President of the Centreville Civic Association. The Association now represented “more than 250 families and 30 institutions.” She wrote that the Association had spoken in favor on February 27 believing the civic association and the community supported the plan, and that “KPA misinterpreted or misunderstood critical information,” in particular “the effect of the Resolution in converting the pocket community approval processes from a matter of discretionary approval, to a matter of right.”
She wrote: “Had we understood then what we now know, KPA would not have supported this change.” The Board “unanimously voted to retract our support” and asked, “that County Council reverse its vote.”
My resolution rescinded Resolution 24-072 and restored the Centreville plan and guidelines “to their state immediately prior to County Council’s approval of Resolution No. 24-072.” It became Resolution 24-141. Its recitals cited Section 40.26.430 of the Code, which requires “broad-based support of the community” for a Hometown plan, the Kennett Pike Association’s February support and its May 19 retraction. I worked with the residents on it and held two community meetings. I also told Councilwoman Durham that if she wanted to draft her own repeal that did the same thing and go first with it, and the residents approved her version, I would withdraw mine if hers passed.
She drafted Resolution 24-142, “Repealing Resolution 24-072 Which Amended the Centreville Community Redevelopment Plan and Manual of Design Guidelines and Created a Cottage Community Development Option,” reciting that “the long inactive Centreville Design Review Advisory Committee is in the process of being reconstituted.”
Both were read at the Land Use Committee on June 4, 2024. On mine: “Ms. Hartley-Nagle explained the resolution. Comments from Council: None. Comments from the public: None.” On hers, Councilwoman Kilpatrick, Councilman Carter and I commented, and twelve members of the public spoke, among them Dr. Meredith Perny, George Hobbs, Dan Larnick, Don McDonald, Charlie Weymouth, Richard Abbott, Dr. Blair McConnel and the developer’s land-use attorney, Larry Tarabicos.
On June 11, 2024, I moved, seconded by Councilman Cartier, to go out of order and take up her Resolution 24-142 first. The motion carried. Seventeen members of the public spoke, including Bayard Williams, Jon Livadas, Wendie Stabler, Deborah Diver, Richard Abbott, George Hobbs, Don McDonald, Dan Larnick and Larry Tarabicos. Councilman Hollins said a flyer circulated in the fight was “personally disturbing, and damn near racist.” Councilwoman Kilpatrick said: “I have apologized to Councilwoman Durham this morning.” Councilwoman Durham said repeal would allow a process “where all voices can be heard, and the future of Centreville can be guided under updated draft guidelines.” Larry Tarabicos told Council: “There are at least 50 lots on the north side of Route 52 that are a third of an acre or less.”
Resolution 24-142 passed 7 to 5 with one not voting. Yes: Councilman David Carter, District 6; Councilman John Cartier, District 8; Councilwoman Dee Durham, District 2; Councilwoman Valerie George, District 5; Councilman David Tackett, District 11; Councilman Brandon Toole, District 1; and me. No: Councilman Bill Bell, District 12; Councilman Penrose Hollins, District 4; Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick, District 3; Councilman Timothy Sheldon, District 9; Councilman Jea P. Street, District 10. Not voting: Councilman George Smiley, District 7. I then moved to return to the regular order and withdrew Resolution 24-141, as I had said I would.
“Ten to two to rewrite the village in February. Seven to five to undo it in June. The same sponsor on both. The residents did the work in between.”
She then introduced Ordinance 24-112 the same night to amend Sections 40.26.420 through 40.26.460 of the Code so that amendments to a Community Redevelopment Plan must be made “through an ordinance” rather than “resolution of County Council,” with “a review and recommendation by the Design Review Advisory Committee (DRAC) if one exists.” Its recitals say the process “only functions as intended when the essential Design Review Advisory Committee is, in fact, viable; however, as has been discovered recently, the law is sorely in need of updating.” It went to the Planning Board on October 15, 2024.
Centreville residents learned of the hearing from an attorney on the Friday before it, not from the District 2 newsletter. Thom Harvey wrote that night: “If this passes, the door is open and the developer will be waiting to run through.” Council adopted it 13 to 0 on January 14, 2025, after I had left office. The law she said had been discovered to be in need of updating was the law she had used.
XV. The Meetings
In 2023, constituents across the County asked me, as President of Council, to bring Council to them. I scheduled a series of monthly countywide community meetings on Zoom, open to anyone, announced in advance; I presented the latest issues and legislation, and took questions. Past executive administrations had held them for state, county, municipal, civic, and community leaders. When approached, I said I would host them since the County Executive had declined: Civic leaders had already approached County Executive Matt Meyer, and he firmly said, "No.” The meetings were an opportunity for engagement, input, and answers. Information flowed both ways. Leaders shared their communities' concerns, covered timely issues, and then took that information back to their communities.
Residents who attended told me afterward that what happened at several of them was not spontaneous. They informed me that Councilwoman Dee Durham, District 2, and Councilman David Carter, District 6, with a few allies, had planned to disrupt the meetings, using it as an opportunity for personal attacks had coordinated who would say what and intended to sabotage the series. After a particularly nasty set of attacks by Councilwoman Durham at one meeting, I ended the series. The meetings constituents had asked for stopped because two members of the body I presided over had decided they should.
I did what any resident can do. I filed a request under the Delaware Freedom of Information Act for Councilwoman Durham’s County emails, her personal emails, and her text messages about the meetings. The County emails came. They confirmed what the residents had told me, and they went further. They showed the meetings were planned targets. They showed her enlisting other people. They showed her telling them what to do and what to say. What I read in them was ugly; it was planned, and it was aimed at me. She refused to produce her personal emails and her text messages. I did not take the refusal to the Attorney General. I did not need to. The County account had already told me everything the constituents had, and more.
“The County emails confirmed what the residents said. Then they exceeded it. She refused to turn over the rest.”
The law on what she withheld is settled, and she knows it, because she has used it. The Freedom of Information Act, 29 Del. C. § 10002(o), defines a public record as “information of any kind, owned, made, used, retained, received, produced, composed, drafted or otherwise compiled or collected, by any public body, relating in any way to public business, or in any way of public interest, or in any way related to public purposes, regardless of the physical form or characteristic by which such information is stored, recorded or reproduced.”
In Attorney General Opinion 17-IB51, October 9, 2017, a matter concerning New Castle County Council, the Attorney General held that emails in a Council member’s personal account that are “required by or in fulfillment of their county jobs or positions” or “necessary to the discharge of the Council’s official duties” are public records, and wrote that “it would defy logic, and would be inconsistent with purpose of FOIA, for this Office to conclude that a record could be shielded from FOIA’s reach (even inadvertently) where otherwise public records are in the custody of a public employee or official but not the public body itself.” I know that opinion well. It was issued over a request for my own emails as Council President.
In Attorney General Opinion 24-IB32, August 2024, the Attorney General applied the same rule to a public official’s personal cell phone: communications are subject to production if “required by or in the fulfillment of the employee’s job duties or position,” “prepared by the employee at the direction of a supervisor or the public body,” or “necessary to the discharge of the public body’s official duties.” Two Council members planning what will be said at a Council President’s public meeting are conducting public business. The device does not change that.
On July 7, 2021, Councilwoman Durham herself asked New Castle County under the Freedom of Information Act for “emails, texts, memos, and other documents” from January 1 to July 7, 2021, sent by or between County employees and Council members containing the terms “EV Ready,” “Electric vehicle,” “energy conservation,” and “EV ordinance,” for a bill she was carrying. When the County said the search had turned up 2,158 and then 2,518 documents and needed more time, she petitioned the Attorney General.
Attorney General Opinion 21-IB23, October 4, 2021, addressed to “Councilmember Dee Durham,” found no violation because the County had given statutory reasons and timely estimates. She wrote the Attorney General that “no legal advice is necessary as this pertains only to internal communications on pending legislation.” She wanted other people’s texts about public business, and she went to the Attorney General to get them faster. When the request was for hers, she said no.
“In 2021 she petitioned the Attorney General for other people’s texts about County business. In 2023 she refused to produce her own.”
XVI. The Coffee Shop
Kyle Grantham is a photographer and a former New Castle County communications aide. On February 26, 2026, he announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the New Castle County Council seat in District 3, covering Pike Creek and Hockessin, which Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick was leaving after sixteen years. That same day he met Councilwoman Dee Durham, District 2, at the Brew HaHa coffee shop in Greenville. The meeting lasted about two hours. Another Council member had told him that Councilwoman Durham supported his primary opponent, Kira Alejandro, but still wanted to hear his platform.
His account, which he gave on the record on September 9, 2026, is that she raised, more than once, a communications specialist position on County Council that she and other Council members had discussed creating, along with a chief of staff. He recalls her asking, “Is this something that you should consider?” and saying Council “could look at creating something like that.” He says he told her he did not see how a position could be created “out of thin air,” and that as the meeting ended she said again that Council “could look at this position.” He estimated the two jobs would cost about $250,000 a year with benefits. He did not record the meeting. That night he texted Jordyn Pusey, a Democratic committee chair in the Elsmere area who supported him, that he “kinda felt like she was trying to bribe me with a job” to drop out. Pusey replied, “Eww.”
Councilwoman Durham acknowledged mentioning the possible post. She called her remarks “theoretical.” She said she never offered or promised a job, that any such position would need seven votes, that no agreement existed, that the idea had been discussed for “three years or more,” that “nothing was imminent,” and that she raised it so he would consider it as a future option if he lost. She said: “I think Kyle’s twisting our conversation, to be honest with you.” She endorsed Kira Alejandro. She has made no effort since to create the position. On September 15, 2026, Kira Alejandro won the primary, 3,314 votes to 1,505.
“A two-hour meeting on the day he announced, with a Councilwoman backing his opponent, about a job that no ordinance, budget, or pay plan contains.”
Set the account against the law that governs it.
Delaware Code Title 9, Section 1143: “Except where authorized by law, no elected official of the County Council shall hold any other county office or employment with the County Council during the term for which such official was elected to the County Council.” A Council communications specialist is employment with County Council. The only way Kyle Grantham could take it was by not being on Council. The job she described was, by its nature, an alternative to the seat he had announced for that morning.
Delaware Code Title 9, Section 1162: “All persons employed by the County or by any of its boards, whether as officers or otherwise, and paid either in part or in whole from appropriations made by the County Council shall be compensated only in accordance with pay plans adopted by the County Council.” Section 1148 provides that “the County Council may provide for employees to serve in the office of the Clerk of County Council.” Council creates its own staff positions by ordinance, as it did on June 24, 2025, in Ordinance 25-093, to “create the class specification of Legal Assistant to Counsel to Council.” No ordinance, pay plan or budget creates a communications specialist for County Council. She said so herself: seven votes, no agreement, nothing imminent. She described to a candidate a job that did not exist and that she alone could not create, on the day he entered a race in which she wanted the other candidate to win.
Delaware Code Title 11, Section 1201: “A person is guilty of bribery when: (2) The person offers, confers or agrees to confer a personal benefit upon a public servant or party officer upon an agreement or understanding that some person will or may be appointed to a public office or designated or nominated as a candidate for public office.” Section 1209(4) defines “public servant” to include “persons who are candidates for office.” Section 1209(3) defines “personal benefit” as “gain or advantage to the recipient personally or anything regarded by the recipient as such gain or advantage.”
Bribery is a class E felony. Section 1211, official misconduct, reaches a public servant who, “intending to obtain a personal benefit or to cause harm to another person,” commits “an act constituting an unauthorized exercise of official functions, knowing that the act is unauthorized.” Section 1208 provides that it is no defense that the person whom the accused sought to influence “was not qualified to act in the desired way.” Those are the words of the statute. The reader can place the February 26 conversation beside them.
The New Castle County Ethics Code, Section 2.03.104.D: “No County employee or County official shall use such public office to secure unwarranted privileges, private advancement or gain.” Section 2.03.104.A bars conduct that creates “an appearance that the decisions or actions of the County employee, County official or governmental body are influenced by factors other than the merits.”
Eight months earlier, on June 24, 2026, Recorder of Deeds Michael E. Kozikowski Sr. took Councilman David Tackett, District 11, to lunch at Cosmos Restaurant and described a $76,295 county job in his office three weeks before the filing deadline for the primary in which Tackett was considering challenging him. Tackett recorded it, filed for the office that day, and sent the recording to the Delaware Department of Justice on August 15, 2026. WHYY's Chris Barrish reported, "FBI investigating Delaware politician’s alleged ‘bribe’ to primary foe, after WHYY News exposed secretly recorded job offer."
The Truthline Network documented that offer in “The Job That Was Not There.” Kyle Grantham called the Kozikowski offer “a red flag” because the Recorder has the power to fill a job in his office, and said Councilwoman Durham, “as one individual,” lacks that power, which made her remarks, in his words, “ethically questionable.” The difference between the two is the difference between a man who could deliver and a woman who could not. The statute does not turn on that. Section 1208 says so.
“The Recorder of Deeds could fill the job he dangled. The Councilwoman could not fill hers. The statute says it is no defense that the person could not act in the desired way.”
XVII. The Method
Take the record in order, and the shape is the same every time.
A piece of the truth is offered. The pertinent excerpts of an ethics opinion. A resolution introduced and adopted the same night. A theoretical job. A County email account produced while the personal one is withheld.
The institution that should catch it is routed around. The Ethics Commission is given facts and told nothing more. The Design Review Advisory Committee is left dead so the Department can play its part. The Planning Board and the public hearing are skipped because the instrument is a resolution. The posted sign is covered. The notary works for Council. The County Executive’s portal is overruled by email in capital letters.
The office does the work. A Council President carries the rezoning. The Department of Land Use carries the design guidelines. The Clerk keeps the ordinance off every committee but one, at the Commission’s request. The Counsel to Council stamps the deed. The County’s own historic code, rewritten by her hand, is the code her own house goes under six weeks later.
And the benefit lands where it was always going to land. A house bought from a father for $500,000 leaves for $1,500,000 with a County overlay on it. A developer’s cottage plan gets a by-right approval in a historic village without a design committee ever seeing it. A nonprofit she chairs pays her $22,000 a year while she votes the budget of the department whose park it uses. A candidate she opposed hears about a job on the day he announces.
“The excerpt. The same-night vote. The theoretical job. The County account without the personal one. Every time, the whole truth stayed with her, and the rest of us worked from the part she chose.”
The Ethics Code was written for this. Its purpose clause, Section 2.03.101.B, recognizes “that many public officials are citizen-officials who bring to their public offices the knowledge and concerns of ordinary citizens,” and says they “should not be discouraged from maintaining their contacts with their community.”
The same Code then draws the line, in Section 2.03.103.A.1, at using “the authority of his or her office” for “the personal or private benefit of himself or herself.” It presumes a knowing violation “if the action benefits the County official or employee, his or her spouse, or his or her dependent children.” It does not presume good faith when the official’s own property is the object of the official’s own legislation. It presumes the opposite, and puts the burden on her.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
XVIII. What the Law Provides
XIX. What a Resident Can Do
The Ethics Commission acts on complaints, not on its own. A complaint must be in writing, signed under penalty of perjury, within the Commission’s jurisdiction, and filed within five years of the conduct. The Commission completes a preliminary inquiry within 60 days, gives the subject 14 days to respond before any investigation, reports to the complainant every 90 days, and must issue a probable cause report within 270 days.
For an elected official, its sanctions are a letter of notification, a letter of admonition, or a reprimand sent to County Council. The Commission’s address, forms, and rules are at nccethics.org. The five-year window on the May 25, 2022 sale runs to May 2027. The window on Resolution 24-072 runs to February 2029. The window on the February 26, 2026 meeting runs to 2031.
The Delaware Department of Justice, Division of Civil Rights and Public Trust, receives complaints under Title 11, Chapter 5, Subchapter VI, the bribery, improper influence, and abuse of office provisions. The Superior Court has exclusive jurisdiction over official misconduct under Section 1211(c).
Any citizen may request the County emails of any Council member about any public matter under the Freedom of Information Act, and may petition the Attorney General under 29 Del. C. § 10005(e) within 60 days of a denial, including a refusal to search personal accounts and devices for records about public business. The Attorney General must rule within 20 days. The citizen may then sue, or ask the Attorney General to sue on the citizen’s behalf.
The County’s Design Review Advisory Committee of Centreville is seated. Its meetings are public. Its recommendations under Section 40.26.460.E are written. Every Hometown Overlay plan amendment now requires an ordinance, a Planning Board hearing, and a Design Review Advisory Committee recommendation, because of Ordinance 24-112. That law exists because the people of Centreville made it necessary.
Every Council member’s record is at newcastlecode.portal.civicclerk.com. Every rezoning file is at the Department of Land Use, 87 Reads Way, New Castle. Every deed is at the Recorder of Deeds. Ethics Commission opinions going back to the 1990s are at advisory.nccethics.org. Every nonprofit’s filing is at projects.propublica.org/nonprofits. The record in this report was built from those places. Nothing in it required a subpoena. It required reading the whole document.
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The Evidence File: Receipts, Sources, and Primary Documents
THE TRUTHLINE NETWORK
The Part She Left Out | Karen Hartley-Nagle, Former President of New Castle County Council (2016 to 2024) | Published November 3, 2026
Compiled November 2, 2026. Links verified November 2, 2026. Citations follow the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, seventh edition, with Bluebook form for statutes, codes, and court decisions. Entries in italics are documents in which Councilwoman Dee Durham participated as sponsor, voter, applicant, author, party, petitioner, or quoted speaker. Documents held in the files of The Truthline Network are marked “on file” and are available to any reader on request.
This Evidence File lists 125 documents: 5 in Part I and 120 in Part II.
Part I. Documents the Public Cannot Read
These documents bear on the record in this report. None has been published by the body that holds it.
NP-01. New Castle County Ethics Commission. Request for Advisory Opinion, sworn statement of facts and documentary submissions underlying Advisory Opinion 21-01, received December 2020 or January 2021. Not published. The Commission publishes its opinions and withholds the requests.
NP-02. New Castle County Department of Land Use. Photographs and file notes concerning the posted public notice sign at 901 Mount Lebanon Road, Application 2020-0438 R/Z, taken during 2020 and 2021. Not published.
NP-03. State of Delaware, Division of Revenue, and New Castle County. Realty Transfer Tax Return and Affidavit of Gain and Value for the deed of May 25, 2022, from Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans to Thomas J. Sheehan and Teresa B. Sheehan. Not published. The affidavit states the value on which the $22,566.00 county tax was computed.
NP-04. Councilwoman Dee Durham. Personal email and text message communications concerning the 2023 countywide community meetings, responsive to a Freedom of Information Act request by the President of County Council. Not produced.
NP-05. New Castle County Council. Video record of the February 27, 2024 meeting at which Resolution 24-072 was introduced and adopted, hosted at nccde.new.swagit.com/videos/298524. Not accessible to the public from outside the County’s network at the time of compilation.
Part II. The Record
I. Attorney General Opinions
S-001. Delaware Department of Justice. (2017, October 9). Attorney General Opinion No. 17-IB51, FOIA opinion letter to Ms. Amy Cherry re: FOIA complaint concerning New Castle County Council. https://attorneygeneral.delaware.gov/2017/10/10/17-ib51-1092017-foia-opinion-letter-ms-amy-cherry-re-foia-complaint-concerning-new-castle-county-council/
S-002. Delaware Department of Justice. (2021, October 4). Attorney General Opinion No. 21-IB23, FOIA opinion letter to Councilmember Dee Durham re: FOIA complaint concerning New Castle County.
S-003. Delaware Department of Justice. (2024, August). Attorney General Opinion No. 24-IB32. https://attorneygeneral.delaware.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2024/08/Attorney-General-Opinion-No.-24-IB32-1.pdf
II. Campaign Finance and Election Records
S-004. Delaware Commissioner of Elections. (2026). Campaign Finance Reporting System: Contributions received, Friends for Dee Durham, CF ID 01004307, February 27, 2018, to October 24, 2026. https://cfrs.elections.delaware.gov/Public/ViewReceipts
S-005. Delaware Department of Elections. (2022). Candidate list, 2022 general election, filed candidates by district. https://elections.delaware.gov/candidates/candidatelist/genl_fcddt_2022.html
S-006. Delaware Department of Elections. (2026). Candidate list, 2026 primary election.
https://elections.delaware.gov/candidates/candidatelist/prim_fcddt_2026.html
S-007. Delaware Department of Elections. (2026, September 15). Election night results, 2026 primary election. https://elections.delaware.gov/results/enr/PR2026.html
S-008. Friends for Dee Durham. (2026). About Dee. https://friendsfordeedurham.us/about
III. Court Records
S-009. Durham v. Grapetree, LLC, C.A. No. 2018-0174-SG (Del. Ch. Jan. 31, 2019). https://law.justia.com/cases/delaware/court-of-chancery/2019/2018-0174-sg.html
S-010. Durham v. Grapetree, LLC, C.A. No. 7325-VCG (Del. Ch. May 16, 2014) (letter opinion). https://www.klgatesdelawaredocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/DurhamvGrapetree.pdf
S-011. Durham v. Grapetree, LLC, No. 280, 2024 (Del. Mar. 25, 2025). https://courts.delaware.gov/Opinions/Download.aspx?id=377270
S-012. Durham v. Preservation Delaware, Inc. and Dee Durham, C.A. No. 2018-0686-SG (Del. Ch. filed Sept. 18, 2018), Complaint: Motion to cease and desist using the names “Grapetree LLC” and “The Durham Family,” with Exhibits A through G. On file. https://www.scribd.com/document/389609794/Andrew-C-Durham-v-Preservation-Delaware-Inc-and-Dee-Durham
IV. Deeds and Property Records
S-013. Confirmatory and Corrective Deed, Davis G. Durham, Trustee, to Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans, December 30, 2004, Instrument No. 20041230-0140031, Office of the Recorder of Deeds, New Castle County. On file.
S-014. Correctional Deed, Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans to Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans, February 19, 2022, recorded February 25, 2022, Instrument No. 20220225-0023474, acknowledged before Michael P. Migliore, Notary Public. On file.
S-015. Deed, Davis G. Durham, Trustee Under Declaration of Trust Dated December 29, 1992, to Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans, May 8, 2000, recorded May 11, 2000, Deed Book 2825, Page 151, with Right of First Refusal/Option Agreement (Exhibit A) and Right of First Refusal Agreement (Exhibit B), Book 2825, Pages 155 to 169. On file.
S-016. Deed, Dee Durham and Barry R. Evans to Thomas J. Sheehan and Teresa B. Sheehan, May 25, 2022, prepared by The Matlusky Firm, LLC, File No. GT22-372, county realty transfer tax $22,566.00. On file.
S-017. Deed, Mary T. Thompson to Davis Godfrey Durham and Harriet Frorer Durham, May 14, 1950, Deed Record C, Volume 50, Page 304, Office of the Recorder of Deeds, New Castle County. On file.
S-018. Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs. (2016). National Register of Historic Places registration form, 901 Mount Lebanon Road, with photographs by Michael J. Emmons Jr. https://services3.arcgis.com/SQCfgWRY8UNlOwRo/arcgis/rest/services/HistoricProperty_Public/FeatureServer/0/87762/attachments/28129
S-019. Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs. (2017, June 27). State fiscal year 2017 review: Delaware properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places. https://history.delaware.gov/2017/06/27/state-fiscal-year-2017-review-delaware-properties-listed-in-the-national-register-of-historic-places/
S-020. Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs. (2017, November 9). Certificates presented for Delaware properties listed in the National Register in 2017. https://history.delaware.gov/2017/11/09/certificates-presented-for-delaware-properties-listed-in-the-national-register-in-2017/
S-021. National Park Service. (2017). National Register of Historic Places, 901 Mount Lebanon Road, Rockland vicinity, New Castle County, Delaware, Reference No. 100000656, listed March 28, 2017. https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/100000656
S-022. New Castle County. (2026). Parcel search record, 901 Mt Lebanon Rd, Wilmington, DE 19803, Parcel 06-075.00-006: owner, assessment, land use applications, permits, deed history, and tax payments. On file.
S-023. Trulia. (2026). 404 Snuff Mill Rd, Wilmington, DE 19807: Sold May 26, 2022, $610,000. https://www.trulia.com/p/de/wilmington/404-snuff-mill-rd-wilmington-de-19807--2017984213
S-024. Zillow. (2026). 901 Mount Lebanon Rd, Wilmington, DE 19803: Sold June 8, 2022, $1,500,000. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/901-Mount-Lebanon-Rd-Wilmington-DE-19803/72988595_zpid/
V. Delaware Code and Constitution
S-025. 11 Del. C. §§ 1201 to 1213 (bribery, improper influence, abuse of office). https://delcode.delaware.gov/title11/c005/sc06/index.html
S-026. 29 Del. C. §§ 10001 to 10007 (Freedom of Information Act). https://delcode.delaware.gov/title29/c100/index.html
S-027. 29 Del. C. §§ 5802 to 5807 (State Employees’, Officers’ and Officials’ Code of Conduct). https://delcode.delaware.gov/title29/c058/sc01/index.html
S-028. 30 Del. C. §§ 5401 to 5412 (realty transfer tax), including § 5402 and § 5409. https://delcode.delaware.gov/title30/c054/sc01/index.html
S-029. 9 Del. C. § 8102 (county realty transfer tax). https://delcode.delaware.gov/title9/c081/sc01/index.html
S-030. 9 Del. C. §§ 1141 to 1164 (County Council of New Castle County), including §§ 1143, 1146, 1147, 1148, 1151, 1153, 1162. https://delcode.delaware.gov/title9/c011/sc04/index.html
S-031. 9 Del. C. §§ 1181 to 1183 (personal financial interest; prohibitions and penalties). https://delcode.delaware.gov/title9/c011/sc05/index.html
S-032. Del. Const. art. V, §§ 7, 8. https://delcode.delaware.gov/constitution/constitution-06.html
VI. Emails and Correspondence
S-033. Abbott, R. L. (2024, April 12, 11:28 a.m.). RE: Meeting-4/11/2024-7:00 PM Annual CCA [Email to D. McDonald Jr., D. Durham and others asking for a yes or no answer by April 19 on a repeal]. On file.
S-034. Abbott, R. L. (2024, April 23). RE: Resumes-DRAC [Email to K. Phillips and others]. On file.
S-035. Abbott, R. L. (2024, April 30, 9:59 a.m.). RE: DEE DURHAM COVER UP 24-072 [Email to D. McDonald Jr., D. Durham and others]. On file.
S-036. Anonymous. (2026). [Unsigned letter to New Castle County Council concerning Councilwoman Dee Durham, delivered with supporting documents to all members of Council]. On file.
S-037. Cartier, J. (2021, January 25). RE: Placing Historic Overlay on our property [Email to D. Durham and K. Hartley-Nagle]. On file.
S-038. Danzeisen, J. (2024, January 22). [Letter of the Kennett Pike Association to President Karen Hartley-Nagle and Members of New Castle County Council]. In agenda packet, February 27, 2024. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4212,plainText=false)
S-039. Diver, D. (2024, May 19). [Letter of the Kennett Pike Association to President Karen Hartley-Nagle and Members of New Castle County Council retracting support for Resolution 24-072]. https://kennettpike.com/pdf_documents/KPA%20Letter%20to%20NCC%20Council%20re%20Centreville%20Pocket%20Community%202024.05.19.pdf
S-040. Durham, D. (2021, January 23). Placing Historic Overlay on our property [Email to K. Hartley-Nagle and J. Cartier, with “the pertinent excerpts” of Advisory Opinion 21-01]. On file.
S-041. Durham, D. (2021, January 26). FW: Placing Historic Overlay on our property [Email to K. Hartley-Nagle: “Do you want to add John Cartier as a co-sponsor?”]. On file.
S-042. Durham, D. (2024, April 30, 7:39 a.m.). Re: DEE DURHAM COVER UP 24-072 [Email: “Applications can ALSO be sent directly to me. They do NOT need to go through the portal.”]. On file.
S-043. Durham, D. (2024, February 26, 10:17 a.m. and 4:31 p.m.). RE: [EXTERNAL] Re: BRUD....FYI.....A Proposed Centreville Development [Two emails to Centreville residents: “this proposal for a change in the Centreville Hometown Overlay was not ‘my’ proposal”; “Regardless of tomorrow, which I will get back to you on”]. On file.
S-044. Durham, D. (2024, March 1, 10:54 a.m.). RE: Important * Centreville DRAC we have 7 now [Email to R. Abbott, J. Kilpatrick, D. McDonald Jr. and others: “Feel free to report me to the Ethics Commission, that is your prerogative.”]. On file.
S-045. Harvey, T. (2024, April 29). Re: Resumes-DRAC [Email to K. Phillips and others]. On file.
S-046. Hill, N. (2024, May 24, 11:40 a.m.). Final copy Centreville res [Email to K. Hartley-Nagle, Clerk of Council, transmitting the final text of Resolution 24-141]. On file.
S-047. Kilpatrick, J. (2021, February 24). Fw: advisory opinion [Email to K. Hartley-Nagle with link to Browse Documents, New Castle County Advisory (nccethics.org)]. On file.
S-048. Kilpatrick, J. (2024, February 29, 8:11 a.m., 12:11 p.m. and 4:22 p.m.). Re: New Castle County Resolution 24-072 [Three emails to Centreville residents: “This legislation received 9 votes”]. On file.
S-049. Larnick, D. (2024, April 30, 8:48 a.m.). Re: DEE DURHAM COVER UP 24-072 [Email to D. Durham]. On file.
S-050. Larnick, D. (2024, February 29, 11:50 a.m.). Important *** Centreville DRAC we have 7 now, recruit notice [Email to Centreville residents and Council members]. On file.
S-051. McConnel, B. (2024, April 12, 6:47 a.m.). [Valley Way secretary notes of the April 11, 2024 Centreville Civic Association annual meeting, with transcript of exchange with Alan Livadas]. On file.
S-052. McConnel, B. (2024, February 26, 1:40 p.m.). RE: A Proposed Centreville Development [Email to D. Durham: “This is the first I am hearing of the proposed development.”]. On file.
S-053. McDonald, D., Jr. (2024, April 14, 9:42 a.m.). Re: Centerville Civic Association Annual Meeting Notes and Comments from the meeting 4/11/2024 RE-5719 Kennett Pike [Email to Centreville residents, K. Hartley-Nagle, M. Meyer and others]. On file.
S-054. McDonald, D., Jr. (2024, April 19, 12:05 p.m.). Re: Resumes-DRAC-DEE DURHAM-Erroneous Information from Council Woman Dee Durham [Email to M. Meyer, D. Durham, K. Hartley-Nagle and others]. On file.
S-055. McDonald, D., Jr. (2024, April 30, 9:55 a.m. and 4:41 p.m.). Re: DEE DURHAM COVER UP 24-072 Increased Transparency by Dee Durham what a FARCE; NON TRANSPARENT NON ETHICAL. INVESTIGATION REQUESTED 4/30/2024 [Two emails, the second to A. Lewis and J. Sebring, New Castle County Ethics Commission, and Attorney General K. Jennings, with Durham’s District 2 News & Notes of April 30, 2024, attached]. On file.
S-056. Migliore, M. P. (2024, May 1, 9:44 p.m.). Centreville [Email to K. Hartley-Nagle transmitting the working draft of the resolution rescinding Resolution 24-072]. On file.
S-057. Milkovics, K. A., Abbott, R. L., Harvey, T., and McDonald, D., Jr. (2024, October 11 to 12). DRAC legislation [Email chain among Centreville residents on Ordinance 24-112 and the October 15, 2024 Planning Board hearing, forwarded to D. Durham and K. Hartley-Nagle by D. Larnick]. On file.
S-058. Patibanda, C. (2024, February 16). [Department of Land Use memorandum on the Centreville Community Redevelopment Plan amendment]. In agenda packet, February 27, 2024. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4212,plainText=false)
S-059. Phillips, K. (2024, April 19, 11:32 a.m. and 12:36 p.m.). RE: Resumes-DRAC [Two emails to D. McDonald Jr. and others, Office of the County Executive]. On file.
S-060. Smiley, G. (2024, February 27, 6:42 a.m.). Re: A Proposed Centreville Development [Email to Centreville residents and Council members: “I know who said what. I was listening.”]. On file.
S-061. Stabler, W. C. (2024, January 29). [Letter to N. Manlove Hill, Clerk of County Council, on behalf of Spanos LLC, with enclosures]. In New Castle County Council agenda packet, February 27, 2024, pp. 86 to 88. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4212,plainText=false)
S-062. Williams, B. (2024, January 22). [Letter of the Centreville Civic Association to New Castle County Council]. In agenda packet, February 27, 2024. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4212,plainText=false)
VII. Ethics Commission Opinions, Rules and Reports
S-063. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (1994, August 29). Advisory Opinion 94-04: Voting conflict. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/
S-064. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (1997, April 12). Advisory Opinion 97-05: Prohibited representation. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/
S-065. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2005, December 28). Advisory Opinion 05-24: Non-profit. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/
S-066. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2006, April 12). Advisory Opinion 06-06: County official. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/
S-067. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2012, June 13). Regulations of the New Castle County Ethics Commission. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1383/NCC-Ethics-Information
S-068. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2013). Advisory Opinion 13-09: Appearance of impropriety. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/
S-069. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2013, May 7). Advisory Opinion 13-05: Appearance of impropriety. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/
S-070. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2015, August 12). Advisory Opinion 15-09: Appearance of impropriety. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/
S-071. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2015, November 16). Advisory Opinion 15-12: Non-profit. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/
S-072. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2021, January 13). Advisory Opinion 21-01: Council member. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/document/318.htm
S-073. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2025, June 11). Advisory Opinion 25-05 (reciting the current text of Sections 2.03.102, 2.03.103 and 2.03.104). https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/pdfs/AO25-05.final.pdf
S-074. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (2026). 2025 annual report. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63687/Ethics-Commission-2025-Annual-Report
S-075. New Castle County Ethics Commission. (n.d.). Request an opinion. https://www.advisory.nccethics.org/request-an-opinion.htm
S-076. New Castle County. (n.d.). Government ethics brochure. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1143/Government-Ethics-Brochure
VIII. Federal Law
S-077. 18 U.S.C. § 599 (promise of appointment by candidate). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/599
S-078. 18 U.S.C. § 600 (promise of employment or other benefit for political activity). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/600
S-079. 18 U.S.C. § 666 (theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/666
IX. Internal Revenue Service Filings
S-080. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. (2026). People search: Dee Durham. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/name_search?q=Dee+Durham
S-081. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. (2026). Plastic Free Delaware, EIN 85-2916447: Forms 990-EZ, 2023 through 2025. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/852916447
S-082. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. (2026). Preservation Delaware Inc., EIN 51-0345619: Forms 990 and 990-PF, fiscal years 2018 through 2025. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/510345619
X. New Castle County Code
S-083. New Castle County Department of Land Use. (2026, March 10). Unified Development Code, revision of March 10, 2026. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/63366/UDC-Revision-03102026
S-084. New Castle County Office of the County Auditor. (2019, August 28). Realty transfer tax audit report. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/34707/Realty-Transfer-Tax-Audit-Report-82819
S-085. New Castle County Recorder of Deeds. (n.d.). Transfer tax information sheet. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/35/Transfer-Tax-Information-Sheet-PDF
S-086. New Castle County, Del., Code of Ordinances (codified through Ordinance No. 26-021, March 10, 2026), including Chapter 2, Article 3 (Ethics), Division 2.03.100, and Chapter 2, Article 4, Division 2.04.100 (Ethics Commission). https://library.municode.com/de/new_castle_county/codes/code_of_ordinances
S-087. New Castle County, Del., Unified Development Code ch. 40, art. 15 (Historic resources), §§ 40.15.000 to 40.15.320. https://library.municode.com/de/new_castle_county/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CH40UNDECO_ART15HIRE_S40.15.310PRHIREMALADEPL
S-088. New Castle County, Del., Unified Development Code ch. 40, art. 26 (Hometown Overlay), §§ 40.26.410 to 40.26.460. https://library.municode.com/de/new_castle_county/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CH40UNDECO_ART26MOST_S40.26.410PU
S-089. New Castle County, Del., Unified Development Code ch. 40, art. 30 (Boards and committees), § 40.30.450 (Design Review Advisory Committees). https://library.municode.com/de/new_castle_county/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CH40UNDECO_ART30COCOADBO_S40.30.110RE
S-090. New Castle County, Del., Unified Development Code ch. 40, art. 31 (Procedures and administration), §§ 40.31.113, 40.31.320, 40.31.340, 40.31.900 to 40.31.920. https://library.municode.com/de/new_castle_county/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=CH40UNDECO_ART31PRAD_DIV40.31.100APREPR
XI. New Castle County Council Legislation, Agendas, Minutes and Pages
S-091. New Castle County Council. (2020). Substitute No. 1 to Ordinance No. 20-071, as amended by Floor Amendments Nos. 1, 2 and 3 [Adopted October 27, 2020]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/40192/20-071SubstituteNo1
S-092. New Castle County Council. (2020, August 25). Ordinance No. 20-089: Revise zoning map, Brandywine Hundred, 901 Mount Lebanon Road, Tax Parcel Nos. 06-075.00-006 & 06-075.00-026 [Introduced by Ms. Hartley-Nagle; Applicant: Dee Durham]. https://newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/39330/20-089
S-093. New Castle County Council. (2020, June 9). Ordinance No. 20-071 [Introduced by Ms. Durham, Mr. Cartier]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/38261/20-071
S-094. New Castle County Council. (2020, October 13). Ordinance No. 20-111: Revise zoning map, 501 Mount Lebanon Road [Introduced by Ms. Durham]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/40126/20-111
S-095. New Castle County Council. (2020, October 27). Agenda, County Council meeting. https://www.newcastlede.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_10272020-2008
S-096. New Castle County Council. (2021, February 16). Minutes, Land Use Committee. https://www.newcastlede.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_02162021-2086
S-097. New Castle County Council. (2021, February 23). Minutes, County Council meeting [Ordinance 20-089 adopted 12 to 0, Durham recused]. https://www.newcastlede.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/ArchivedMinutes/_02232021-1919
S-098. New Castle County Council. (2024, February 20). Minutes, Land Use Committee. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4210,plainText=false)
S-099. New Castle County Council. (2024, February 27). Minutes, County Council meeting [Resolution 24-072 adopted 10 to 2]. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4218,plainText=false)
S-100. New Castle County Council. (2024, June 11). Agenda packet, County Council meeting [Resolutions 24-141 and 24-142; Ordinance 24-112]. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4502,plainText=false)
S-101. New Castle County Council. (2024, June 11). Minutes, County Council meeting [Resolution 24-142 adopted 7 to 5; Resolution 24-141 withdrawn]. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4487,plainText=false)
S-102. New Castle County Council. (2024, June 11). Ordinance No. 24-112 [Introduced by Ms. Durham; adopted January 14, 2025]. https://newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/55327/24-112
S-103. New Castle County Council. (2024, June 11). Resolution No. 24-141: Rescinding New Castle County Resolution No. 24-072 regarding the Centreville Community Redevelopment Plan and Manual of Design Guidelines and a cottage community development option [Prime sponsor: Ms. Hartley-Nagle; withdrawn]. On file.
S-104. New Castle County Council. (2024, June 4). Minutes, Land Use Committee. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4475,plainText=false)
S-105. New Castle County Council. (2024, May 21). Minutes, Boards and Commissions Subcommittee. https://newcastlecode.api.civicclerk.com/v1/Meetings/GetMeetingFileStream(fileId=4439,plainText=false)
S-106. New Castle County Council. (2026). Legislative portal. https://newcastlecode.portal.civicclerk.com
S-107. New Castle County Department of Land Use and Planning Board. (2020, December 15). Recommendation report, Ordinance 20-089, Application 2020-0438 R/Z, 901 Mount Lebanon Road. https://newcastlede.gov/DocumentCenter/View/41559/20-089LUPBmmo
S-108. New Castle County. (2026). County Council. https://www.newcastlede.gov/226/County-Council
S-109. New Castle County. (2026). Dee Durham, District 2. https://www.newcastlede.gov/436/Dee-Durham---District-2
S-110. New Castle County. (2026). Design Review Advisory Committee of Centreville. https://www.newcastlede.gov/392/DRAC-of-Centreville
S-111. New Castle County. (2026). Hometown Overlays. https://www.newcastlede.gov/361/Hometown-Overlays
XII. News Reports and Published Accounts
S-112. Barrish, C. (2026, September 9). Delaware candidate says elected official raised possibility of getting him a nonexistent government job if he didn’t run. WHYY. https://whyy.org/articles/new-castle-county-dee-durham-kyle-grantham-job-offer-allegation/
S-113. Delaware Public Media. (2019, January 11). New faces bring new perspectives to New Castle County Council. https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2019-01-11/new-faces-bring-new-perspectives-to-new-castle-county-council
S-114. Delaware Public Media. (2023, August 3). NCC Council President presents safety blueprint for the county while questioning crime stats. https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2023-08-03/ncc-council-president-presents-safety-blueprint-for-the-county-while-questioning-crime-stats
S-115. Hartley-Nagle, K. (2026, September 15). The job that was not there. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/the-job-that-was-not-there
S-116. Nagengast, L. (2020, October 30). New Castle County moves to boost historic preservation efforts. Delaware Public Media. https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2020-10-30/new-castle-county-moves-to-boost-historic-preservation-efforts
S-117. Newark Post. (2026, September). Alejandro wins Democratic primary for District 3 county council seat. https://www.newarkpostonline.com/news/alejandro-wins-democratic-primary-for-district-3-county-council-seat/article_63b33d00-fc40-46c5-9ef9-65140c45651d.html
S-118. Sawicki, R. (2024, June 12). New Castle County Council rescinds resolution adding cottage development option in Centreville. Delaware Public Media. https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2024-06-12/new-castle-county-council-rescinds-resolution-adding-cottage-development-option-in-centreville
S-119. The News Journal. (2022, November 9). 2022 election: Incumbents carry 2 contested New Castle County races. https://www.yahoo.com/news/2022-election-incumbents-carry-2-082300057.html
XIII. Preservation Delaware Event Materials
S-120. Preservation Delaware. (2018). 2018 annual meeting & garden party: Mid Mod celebration, Sunday, September 23, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.; sponsorship levels; sponsors to date [Website pages and Facebook event, reproduced as Exhibits A, C and F to C.A. No. 2018-0686-SG]. On file. https://www.facebook.com/events/2134542423535571/
“Every document in this report is a public record. You do not need a lawyer,
a reporter, or anyone’s permission to read a single one of them.”
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Attribution:
Content and analysis © 2025 The Truthline Network, a division of Nexus Innovation Group LLC.
All content authored by Karen Hartley-Nagle, Founder & Publisher, The Truthline Network; Editor-in-Chief, Host & Executive Producer, The Truthline (Radio & Live); Former President, New Castle County Council (2016–2024); Founder & CEO, Nexus Innovation Group, LLC.
Excerpts, data, or quotations may be reproduced for noncommercial use with attribution to The Truthline Network and a direct link to the original report. Commercial use or republication requires written permission.
Every document cited is identified by title, date, author or issuing body, and location. Documents held on file are available to readers on request. Quotations from public officials are their words as recorded in public documents or as published; where a statement was first reported elsewhere, the fact is stated here as the official’s own.
Cite as:
Hartley-Nagle, K. (2026, November 3). The part she left out: A Truthline investigative report on New Castle County Councilwoman Dee Durham. The Truthline Network. https://www.karenhartleynagle.com/
Read the full documents: The Evidence File → Sources above
“Transparency isn’t charity. It’s the rent you pay for power”
Read The New Castle County Tax Reckoning Series:
PART I | PART II | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chaper 5
Read The Audit Reckoning Series:
Report 1 | Report 2 | Report 3 | Report 4 | Coming Soon: Report 5 & Report 6
THE TRUTHLINE NETWORK
“Truth doesn't whisper. It breaks through.”
In 2001, James P. Hoffa, General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and son of Jimmy Hoffa, reached down into Local 326 in Delaware and admonished one business agent for misrepresentation and misuse of union money. That business agent was George Smiley. The International's Executive Committee found him guilty of misrepresentation on appeal. Smiley paid the money back and lost his union post.
Michael J. Ciabattoni, a former president of Local 326, said it on the record to The News Journal in 2004: "If you want to say we had a vendetta because he was a crook, he's correct. I don't like thieves."
The Teamsters told the newspaper George Smiley was unworthy of their endorsement. Their own local endorsed his opponent. New Castle County elected George Smiley anyway.
Today Councilman George Smiley co-chairs the Finance Committee of New Castle County Council, the committee that watches the county's money.
Twenty-two years after James P. Hoffa admonished him, the United States Tax Court described how developer Nicholas Ferrara Jr. brought a rezoning to Councilman George Smiley in 2006, and how by March 2007 Councilman Smiley was in favor. Six years later, 58 acres beside the New Castle County Airport, appraised at $6,900,000 as industrial land, sold for $11,100,000, rezoned as commercial. $4,200,000 of that went to the developer's partnership for the political work.
Before he was a councilman, George Smiley was a business agent at that union hall. When members called on a Friday looking for him, staff were told to say he was out on union business. He was on his boat. The boat was named Union Business.
The rezoning that followed carries three signatures, and two of the people who signed it now run the State of Delaware.
The Tax Court was deciding a tax bill. Nobody put Councilman George Smiley's conduct before it. That question has never been asked by anyone with the power to answer it.
And there's the MORE we haven't named.
“The headlines wrote themselves.”
